Take Your Pick: Royals Draft Flashback, Part 2 (1973-1977)

It was during these amateur drafts that we start to see the nucleus of the Royals’ playoff teams of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The lower rounds of the MLB draft still served mostly to pad minor league rosters. It gave a lot of also-rans and never-weres a few reps, but the early rounds generated some Royal gems.

NOTE: I neglected to mention in part one that Frank White, one of the top five Royals ever, was signed as an undrafted free agent in the otherwise epic fail year of 1970.

The Royals were a non-entity in the 1973 amateur draft, which featured two Hall of Famers (Robin Yount and Dave Winfield) in the first five picks. Lew Olsen, chosen ninth overall, showed early promise as a righty…