When you are rebuilding your organization, you need to be smart, but you also need to be a bit lucky. That means getting a few players to perform significantly better than you ever expected. The Royals have one great example of that in Whit Merrifield, a player that everyone passed over in the Rule 5 draft that turned himself into an All-Star. But in 2019, they also found another example in Hunter Dozier, the once disappointing first-round pick who was suddenly one of the best hitters in baseball.
The underlying data suggested that Dozier’s performance in 2019 was no fluke, however he had only hit .