The Royals recently added their newest draft picks to the organization, so it seems like a good time to look back and how their past draft classes have fared. Five years later, how are their 2021 draftees performing?
Unlike drafts in the NFL and NBA, the MLB Draft isn’t simply a matter of taking the best player available. Every pick in the first ten rounds comes with an assigned slot value, and each club has a capped bonus pool to sign its entire draft class. Teams can pay draft picks the full slot value, or
they can allocate the funds in uneven ways with some draft picks getting less than slot value and others getting much more.
This strategy is called drafting a player “underslot.” By selecting a player willing to sign for below the slot value of your first-round pick, a team can free up bonus pool money to spend later in the draft. That extra money can be used to entice hard-to-sign prospects, usually high school players who can use college as leverage if they don’t receive an acceptable offer, to sign for well above the slot value of where they are selected. The strategy can be especially effective in draft classes without a clear-cut top prospect but with considerable depth, allowing teams to spread their resources across multiple high-upside players rather than concentrating them in a single pick. It is similar to the strategy of “trading down” in other drafts, but since MLB does not allow teams to swap picks, they instead use the underslot strategy.
That was the strategy the Royals employed in 2021 when they had the seventh overall pick. There was no consensus top pick that year, with Louisville catcher Henry Davis, Vanderbilt pitchers Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker, high school pitcher Jackson Jobe, and prep infielders Marcelo Mayer, Jordan Lawlar, Khalil Watson, and Brady House among the top names. With no clear dichotomy between tiers, it seemed the Royals were in a good position to land a talented player at pick #7.
“The beauty of the opportunity we’re in is that there are going to be several options in front of us,” scouting director Lonnie Goldberg said.
Leading up to the draft there was a lot of buzz linking the Royals to Rocker, who had wowed scouts pitching for the Commodores in the College World Series. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel wrote Rocker-to-the-Royals was “looking like one of the more likely picks in the mock.”
However he had some fluctuations in velocity that spring and his advisor Scott Boras refused to submit Rocker to pre-draft MRI testing. Rocker fell to the Mets at #10, and failed to sign after the Mets did not make an offer after his physical. Rocker would be selected by the Rangers third overall the next year and is currently in their starting rotation.
The Royals were also connected to many of the prep infielders, with Jim Callis at MLB Pipeline writing that the team was “believed to prefer a hitter.” They were said to be interested in Lawlar and Watson, but the buzz was about House, a prep infielder from Georgia, who Keith Law of The Athletic characterized as having “sort of been the Royals’ guy.” There was also some buzz the Royals could take infielder Will Taylor, a speedy high school outfielder from South Carolina whom most observers ranked outside the top ten.
The draft got off to a surprising start with the Pirates bypassing Mayer to take Davis, the Louisville catcher. The Rangers snagged Leiter, and the Tigers took a gamble on Jobe. The Red Sox pounced on Mayer, and the Orioles went with an underslot selection by taking Sam Houston State outfielder Colton Cowser. Arizona took Lawlar, leaving the Royals with several options they were connected to, including Rocker, House, and Watson.
The Royals zagged and took Connecticut high school pitcher Frank Mozzicato, who Baseball America ranked as the #42 prospect in the draft. David Schoenfield at ESPN wrote that the selection “certainly qualifies as the most surprising pick so far.” Mozzicato had pitched in the Northeast, generally not a hotbed of baseball talent, and had avoided national tournaments. His fastball sat in the upper 80s, but scouts were wowed by a plus curve that helped him throw four no-hitters. Ben Badler at Baseball America wrote that while it was “surprising to see him go this high,” he loved Mozzicato’s upside and that the lefty had a “ton of projection arrows pointing the right way.”
The Royals selected him because he would take an underslot deal, allowing them flexibility later in the draft. Mozzicato would sign for $3.55 million, well under the $5.43 million slot value.
“We felt that going into this particular Draft,” general manager Dayton Moore said, “if it fell the way it did up top, with the first six picks in front of us [and] with the fact that it’s only 20 rounds and the value that a lot of players put on themselves economically, that it may be a wise strategy to not only look at taking the best upside player or pitcher available, but also be able to maximize what we could do later on with the other 19 selections. That’s part of what we have to consider going forward.”
The Royals went to work using that financial flexibility to take a pair of local kids in the next two rounds. In the second round, they selected pitcher Ben Kudrna out of Blue Valley Southwest in Overland Park, Kansas, ranked #47 by Baseball America. In round three they chose #82-ranked prospect catcher Carter Jensen out of Park Hill High School in Kansas City. Kudrna signed for $3 million, well over his $1.73 slot value, while Jensen signed for $1.1 million, more than his $793,000 slot value. The Royals also went overslot the next round with prep pitcher Shane Panzini, giving him nearly $1 million. They even went overslot on some later picks, like college pitcher Eric Cerantola and college catcher Luca Tresh.
The gambit was criticized as an “exercise in hubris”, as argued by Matthew LaMar on our site.
It is dangerous to think you’re smarter than the consensus. Beyond that, it is dangerous to draft high school pitchers, especially if your organization has a long and putrid track record of doing so successfully. For the Royals to double down on that is frustrating.
Mozzicato never really added the velocity scouts hoped for, and while his curve fooled hitters at lower levels, he struggled with his control at Double-A. Rocker’s medicals and bonus demands perhaps caused the Royals to pass, and while he did need Tommy John surgery, he now seems to be developing into a solid starter. House and Watson both reached the majors, although neither has developed into much of an offensive force. It’s difficult to argue either would have transformed the Royals, but they would have provided considerably more value than Mozzicato has to date.
The Mozzicato deal did allow them to grab Carter Jensen, who has 14 home runs, fifth among all rookies, and has been an above-average bat. Kudrna had a promising career until he hit Triple-A, and he underwent elbow surgery this year that will keep him out for a while.
The Royals also did well with another local kid later in the draft, with Noah Cameron in round seven. The St. Joseph native was an underrated prospect out of the University of Central Arkansas, but he rose through the ranks and had an impressive rookie season in 2025 in the Royals starting rotation.
Much of the rest of the draft class is already out of baseball. Peyton Wilson is a utility infielder at the Triple-A level who was recently passed over in favor of older vets, so there may not be a future for him with the Royals. Tyson Guerrero was on the cusp of a potential call-up until he started experiencing injury issues. Tresh has been a solid bat at the Triple-A level and could be a backup catcher someday.
The 2021 draft illustrates both the promise and the peril of the underslot strategy. The Royals turned one unconventional first-round pick into the financial flexibility to sign several talented high school prospects, and that approach helped land Carter Jensen, who has emerged as one of the best players from the class. But the strategy also hinges on identifying the right player with that first pick.
It is fine to reach for a player the rest of the market is overlooking, but you have to be right. Mozzicato does not seem likely to be a worthwhile pick and is a miss for evaluators that overlooked his slight frame and lack of competition. Fortunately, the Royals did find a few gems in their backyard to make this a decent draft class, but a small market team cannot afford to miss the mark on top-ten picks.
