Royals throw the draft a first round curve

The Royals gamble with their first pick in the 2021 draft by selecting prep lefty Frank Mozzicato.

If the Major League Baseball draft is something of a crapshoot, in Sunday’s first round, the Royals pushed a massive stack of chips on the hard 10.

With high-profile predraft names still on the board when the Royals were the seventh team on the clock, including Vanderbilt pitcher Kumar Rocker along with prep shortstops Kahlil Watson and Brady House, the Royals went against conventional wisdom and selected high school left-hander Frank Mozzicato with their first pick in the 2021 draft. The Royals never seem to shy away from doing their own thing. They certainly chose a different path in the first round of the 2021 draft.

Mozzicato wasn’t on a lot of draft radars at the start of the spring. He gained momentum during the season on the back of four no-hitters, an improved fastball and a high whiff rate. He was rated at 29 on the Baseball Prospectus predraft board and at number 42 at Baseball America. Kiley McDaniel at ESPN was the most bullish and had him at 21.

The scouting report

Mozzicato stands at 6-3 and possesses a fastball that sits in the low 90s, maxing out around 93 mph. That doesn’t sound that impressive, but he’s made some nice velocity gains over the last year and the thought among scouts is that as his body matures and with some professional tutelage, he’ll continue to add a few ticks to the heater.

The best pitch in Mozzicato’s current arsenal is his curve. It’s a tight offering with “top-to-bottom action, sharp bite and good depth to rack up whiffs,” according to Baseball America. It generally grades as a plus pitch. Overall, he possesses a “free-and-easy delivery (that) spawns a riding fastball and back-breaking curveball,” according to Baseball Prospectus.

Of course, the coolest thing about his most recent high school season was the fact he threw four no-hitters.

Here’s Royals scouting director Lonnie Goldberg giving his report on Mozzicato:

“Projectable left-handed pitcher. Easy working delivery. Plus breaking ball. Huge upside. Plus makeup…You can dream on the kid…He can really, really spin the breaking ball and he’s super-athletic on the mound. We just felt he was the best left-handed pitcher in the class.”

Every report I’ve seen on Mozzicato talks up his athleticism, his smooth mechanics and an elite feel for the art of pitching. The athleticism is what will make the Royals think that he can add some velocity to his pitches. The smooth, repeatable mechanics are what will make them believe in the curveball as a weapon while making him perhaps a little less likely to break down—at least when it comes to prep pitching prospects. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The history

The Royals reaching for Mozzicato is only part of the story. Given the Royals recent drafts (along with where they were making their pick this year) it was a massive surprise that they would go for a prep pitcher. If he signs (and all indications are obviously that he will) he would be only the second high school pitcher to be inked by the Royals since 2018. Ben Hernandez was drafted in the second round last year out of Chicago as the 41st overall pick.

In fact, prep pitching is a category the Royals largely avoided the last several drafts, and probably for good reason. Going through the last 10 drafts, the Royals have selected and signed just 20 high school pitchers. And only two of them have gone on to reach the majors. (More on that in a moment.) That span includes first round Indiana prep selections Ashe Russell and Nolan Watson in 2015, a pair who came nowhere close to realizing their potential while costing the club a considerable chunk of cash.

In the Dayton Moore era, the track record for drafting high school pitchers and developing them into major league talent has not been great. It’s actually been extremely poor. The following table is a list of high school pitchers drafted by the Royals, who signed and made their first major league appearance with the club.

Goodness. That is an extremely grim table.

Perhaps the Royals can get partial credit for Mike Montgomery, drafted in 2008, who reached Triple-A before being included as part of the package for James Shields and Wade Davis. That would help. A little.

Given the franchise’s recent track record with prep pitching and now experiencing a season where we’ve seen several former top college pitching prospects seem to have hit their developmental ceiling, expending a high draft pick on a high school arm isn’t exactly inspiring, no matter the scouting report.

The strategy

This is where you are probably scratching your head. In what was a deep draft at the upper reaches, the Royals were virtually assured a top talent would be available to them when the seventh pick rolled around. As noted above, Rocker and a pair of highly-touted prep shortstops were on the board. With Mozzicato in the late first round/competitive balance pick discussion, this selection vibes of signability, with the Royals perhaps using their savings here to splash some above-slot cash in round two or three.

Moore himself acknowledged as much on Sunday night.

“We felt that going into this particular draft, if it fell the way it did up top, the first six picks in front of us, that it may be really beneficial for us…The fact it’s only 20 rounds now 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, pitcher available, also be able to maximize what we can do later on with the other 19 selections.”

This pick does have a bit of a Hunter Dozier vibe. Dozier, as you will recall, wasn’t on any kind of first round draft radar when the Royals took him with the eighth overall pick in the 2013 draft out of Sam Houston State. They signed Dozier at an under-slot $2.2 million bonus which enabled them to go to $3.55 million for Sean Manaea with the 34th overall pick.

So who could play that Manaea role for the Royals in this draft? Georgia prep SS Bubba Chandler and South Carolina prep OF Will Taylor are both Clemson baseball and football commits. Both were projected in plenty of first round mocks, with Taylor late in several top 10s. It’s possible the Royals could use the savings they should realize with Mozzicato to try to pry either Chandler or Taylor from their commitment to Clemson.

“We definitely need to maximize (the value) of every single pick. The economics of the game are more challenging today than they were five, 10, 15 years ago, especially in the draft. It’s very difficult to sign high school players, truthfully because they put a value on themselves that is not realistic because of what the bonus pool says you can pay…We’ve got to make sure we maximize those bonus pool dollars the very best we can and get as many upside guys with our pool money.”

So maybe this is Moore’s way of recalibrating that value some prep players place on themselves. Hoping someone like Taylor or Chandler will drop to them in the second round and then ultimately paying them above slot for their actual selection, while still paying far less than what it would’ve take for them to sign had they been picked in the early first round.

Of course, for that strategy to pay off, one of those two guys has to be available when the Royals pick next. They have the seventh pick of the day as the draft begins its second round.

The verdict

Given that this pick was clearly made with a larger strategy in mind, it’s impossible to give an immediate verdict on the Mozzicato selection. We simply need to see the rest of the Royals’ plan and execution of the draft. If they draft someone down the board that will require over slot money like a Taylor or Chandler, some of this will make sense. If they don’t…then I don’t know what to tell you.

While it’s not like Mozzicato was completely off the draft radar or something, make no mistake, this is still a gamble. To bypass the talent that was available to go after a prep left-hander is an extreme risk for Moore and Goldberg. In so many of the mocks, Rocker was available for the Royals while Watson and House were off the board. So maybe the Royals were less than enamored with Rocker, whose stock seemed to tumble all spring. But when the Royals saw all the potential talent with the prep shortstops that was at their choosing with their pick, why would they not pivot and take the player they rated the highest among the three? The only way this makes sense is if they can grab Taylor with their pick in the second round and keep the draft pool bonuses manageable.

Make no mistake, this is a massive roll of the dice for the front office. With a spotty track record on player development overall, along with a perennially underachieving major league squad, the pressure is on Moore and Goldberg and farm director J.J. Picollo to deliver. New owner John Sherman has shown patience up to this point, but sometime, and you would have to imagine soon, the results are going to have to start heading in a positive direction.

This almost feels like a self-inflicted Hail Mary. Desperation in an attempt to reverse fortunes. A last-ditch effort of some sort in the hopes that maybe—maybe!—a long shot can finally pay some huge dividends. The Royals haven’t had a bet payoff since Matt Harvey went back out to the mound for the ninth.

Now to see how the plan unfolds in the second round and beyond.