Heading into the 2025 season, most people who followed the Kansas City Royals minor leagues expected that the team would call up Noah Cameron at some point. The 2024 Royals starting rotation was extremely
healthy, and there was bound to be some negative regression on the injury front. Cameron, a native of St. Joe, had come off a successful season at AA and AAA, and seemed likely to be one of the first players called upon if and when some of the Royals starters dealt with injuries. He was one of top prospects in the system and showed up towards the back of some Top 100 prospect lists.
Cameron started the season in AAA, but was called upon to help the big league club early in the season. The lefty made his major-league debut on April 30th against the Tampa Bay Rays, starting in place of an injured Cole Ragans. Cameron looked impressive in his debut, carrying a no-hit bid into the seventh inning. He did walk five and only struck out three, but Rays hitters had a hard time squaring him up, a sign of things to come. Cameron was optioned back to Omaha the next day, but figured to be up the next time the Royals needed a spot starter.
That time would be just a few weeks later, when Cameron came up to start in place of Seth Lugo against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Royals would end up losing that game, but Cameron went 6.1 innings again and only allowed one run. After that start, Cameron, would stay up in Kansas City and take the ball (nearly) every fifth day.
Cameron was simply too good to keep out of the rotation. He had quality starts in his first five appearances, was shelled by the Yankees in his sixth start, but then bounced back nicely with five shutout innings against the Atlanta Braves. The rookie remained extremely consistent throughout the year; his worst month by ERA was 4.50 in June, which given the fluctuations of a season overall is not too bad. At his best he got the results of an ace, at his worst he was Michael Lorenzen.
Overall, Cameron made 24 starts, throwing 138.1 innings. He had a sparkling 2.99 ERA, which was the 16th best ERA in the majors from a pitcher who threw at least 130 innings. The rookie got his results on the strength of his breaking pitches. His curveball was one of the best in baseball, and his slider graded as above average as well. According to Baseball Savant, Cameron was in the 99th percentile of pitchers on the value that he generated from his two breaking pitches.
Cameron did not miss the bats at the level you would expect from a pitcher with a 2.99 ERA, but relied on keeping hitters off balance and inducing weak contact. He was well above-average in the barrel percentage and hard-hit rate allowed, and most of the time hitters had a below-average exit velocity against him. The lefty threw five pitches and offered all of them to hitters at least 14% of the time, so for this season he was able to keep batters guessing. This is a tougher way to get hitters out than someone like Cole Ragans, who can overwhelm hitters with his stuff even if his location is a little off. Still, for this season, Cameron did great at getting hitters out with weak contact and brought stability to a rotation that dealt with significantly more adversity this season.
What the results in 2025 mean for 2026 will be one of the more interesting story lines to follow. First of all, how much regression can we expect from Cameron? His 4.18 FIP and 3.97 xERA tell us that it’s going to be difficult for him to sustain his sub-3.oo ERA. By runs allowed, it’s possible that the Royals have already seen the best results they will ever get from Cameron. Hitters posted a .241 BABIP against the lefty, which is unsustainably low even for someone who excels at inducing soft contact. I think Cameron will be able to out-perform some of his ERA predictors (particularly FIP) moving forward, but not to the extent we saw this season. Still, his 3.97 xERA ranked 34th among pitchers who threw at least 130 innings in all of baseball. Not an ace, but still an above-average pitcher would be a great place for Cameron to settle in as a player and the peripherals this season show that as a possibility.
Second, will the Royals allow Cameron to pitch deeper into games next season? Much to the chagrin of some vocal Royals fans, the southpaw was frequently pulled by Matt Quatraro while he was still getting good results but was going through the order a third time. When they left Cameron in to pitch through the order a third time he had great results, allowing a measly .542 OPS. Does this mean that Q knew exactly when to leave Cameron in and when to pull him, and consistently put him in the best possible positions to succeed? Or did Quatraro pull Cameron too early too often, and the numbers show that starter had more left in the tank when he left the game? The manager could have also been managing Cameron’s workload; between AAA and the majors, Cameron threw 171 innings, which is 42.1 innings more than he threw last year.
Finally, will Cameron be on the Royals next season? It’s no secret that the Royals are looking for another high quality hitter, and the strength of their team once again is their depth at starting pitcher. Cameron just had a very successful season and is under team control until 2032, so presumably he would be an attractive trade piece for other teams. It would be difficult to see the Royals part with someone who has local ties and looks the part of a quality major league starter, but the team will have to part with someone of value to get someone else of value in return. I expect to see Cameron’s name thrown around a lot in hypothetical trades this off-season.
Regardless of what next year brings, Noah Cameron had an incredibly successful rookie campaign. It was a delight to watch him pitch in 2025, and the Royals would not have been able to embark on their second consecutive winning season without him.
