(Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)
For 30 major league teams, including the KC Royals, draft analysis is a complicated, often inexact science based on tool ratings, statistics, spin, pop and barrel rates, launch angles, a myriad of other metrics, in-person and video scouting, background investigations, interviews, and gut instinct.
Some things, though, don’t figure into the equation. Names are one. No club makes draft decisions based even in small part on player names, which serve only to identify, track, and distinguish one prospect from another.
But if names did matter, the Royals may have hit the jackpot in Tuesday’s 15th round of the 2021 draft.