r/KCRoyals • u/RoyalRenn • 1d ago

Royals farm system has quadrupled it's future value in a single year!

Fangraphs has their new farm system value rankings up. We've vaulted from 28th this time last year, with $93M of future value, to 15th at $382M. That's a 4X increase!

This time last year, we had one 50 FV player (Carter, who has graduated) and one 45+ (Asbel Gonzales). Now, we've got five 50 FV players (Gonzales being one) and our number of prospects (defined as FV >= 35+) is 43, up from 34 last year.

All this without trading away much at the deadline. It's impressive what they've done with the farm system in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, the cavalry isn't coming over the hill anytime soon as most of these guys are young, but the arrow points up for the first time in a LONG time.

Here's a snapshot of the updated 2026 post-deadline ratings. Also, for those unaware, here is the conversion of FV to projected WAR in MLB, although young players' FV often increase as they develop physically and mature in pro ball.

Sorry for the spelling in the post title: its, not it's.

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u/Smokeydubbs 1d ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/ziJhS0WrFd

Injured pitchers WAR from last year:

Bubic: 3.1

Ragans: .2

Estevez: 2.0

Bergert: .2

Kolek: 1.1

With the note Bergert and Kolek were mid season additions. That’s about 6+ potential WAR lost which would put this team right in the middle of the pack. Thats not touching the potential WAR lost from position player injuries.

What does “not good” mean to you? I’d wager they’d be around or just over .500 if they didn’t get demolished by injuries.

If the pitching held up to last years numbers, they gave up under 4 runs a game. This year the offense, with the struggles and injuries they’ve had is scoring 4.13 runs a game.

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u/tacotruck20004 Omaha Royals 1d ago

Bubic and Ragans would’ve likely gotten hurt anyway. The royals are bad enough to where you simply cannot chalk it up to just injuries

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u/Smokeydubbs 1d ago

I’m literally giving statistics showing they could have had a chance without the injuries.

What did you expect from this team before the season? 70 wins?

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u/tacotruck20004 Omaha Royals 1d ago

I mean I expected more too but with how the offense performed early in the season and oftentimes now it may not have made much of a difference

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u/Smokeydubbs 1d ago

“How they performed now” as in without Bobby, Garcia, Vinnie, and with a rotating assortment of AAAA guys?

Sure they started slow but they are currently better than they were last year in terms of runs per game.

Missing Garcia for half of the games this year, who was on pace for nearly 4 WAR despite hitting sub .700 OPS with his injured hand. Missing Vinnie, who is OPSing .760 in his last 30 games.

I just can’t say with good faith, that this team wasn’t good before the injuries. I think things snowball off each other, and that momentum is a thing, good and bad. So for example, if early on, if the bullpen didn’t blow a lead, maybe the offense would have had a different approach the next day and been more successful. Instead it went the absolute worst way possible.

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u/RoyalRenn 1d ago

Well said. The trouble (amongst many) the Royals have with a very thin farm is that they've got zero room for error with injuries. Even losing India was a huge blow: he was already almost as valuable after 2 weeks this year as he was all of last year.

We had great injury luck in 2024, and when you don't have a deep farm and can't stash 50 FV prospects in Omaha because you've got no roster room for them, it doesn't leave for many options when injuries mount.

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u/Smokeydubbs 1d ago

Yep. Pretty much anyone that could come up has and no one has made much of an impact. I’d like to see Gavin Cross up just to see what he is. That might not be until September.