Royals Arms on the Doorstep of the Major Leagues
4 minor league pitchers who could debut with the Big League club in 2025
Life comes at you fast. It seems only yesterday we lamented the Royals inability to develop Major League-quality pitching. Now they’re flush with options from Cy Young caliber starters and back-end bullpen bullies to quality depth arms that may find themselves in Triple-A, not due to lack of ability but to heavy competition for relief roles on Opening Day.
This time of year, discussions around baseball are centered around those roster competitions and the players who will get the call (or won’t).
But what about the next men up? The pitchers who we know will begin 2025 in the minor league ranks but may be called upon for a contending team in the next six months?
Kansas City’s pitching staff was remarkably healthy in 2024, and while trying to predict injuries is a fool’s errand, it’s hard to imagine the same level of good fortune in 2025. Fortunately, the Royals reached a point in their pitching development arc where potential debutants won’t send a bead of cold sweat down our brows as they make their way to the mound.
There’s no guarantee any or all of these four pitchers will reach the Show this season, but they represent the most prepared of KC’s minor leaguers to toe a Big League rubber should the need arise.
Before we get into Noah Cameron, Luinder Avila, Eric Cerantola and Evan Sisk, a quick note of thanks to Preston Farr for helping me curate this list. I’m not nearly the prospect aficionado that Preston is (hence his “@royalsminors” X handle), and he and the team at Farm to Fountains are your go-to ball-knowers when it comes to the Royals minor league system.
Noah Cameron (SP)
2024 MiLB (AA/AAA) Stats: 128.2 IP, 3.08 ERA, 3.28 FIP, 1.21 WHIP, 27.8% K, 6.7% BB, 29.9% CSW
Cameron, the 25-year-old left-handed starter out of St. Joseph, Missouri, impressed in Spring Training with a 3.60 ERA and 1.20 WHIP across 10 innings of work before being assigned to minor league camp on Monday, March 10. Prior to the demotion, he showcased his excellent command, issuing just one free pass to his 41 batters faced in Arizona.
As you can see from the tjStuff+ grades, his four-pitch arsenal is mostly average and the four-seam fastball — despite seeing a 2-MPH bump this spring — is decidedly below-average. Cameron’s brilliant command has propelled him to the doorstep of a Big League debut, but it remains to be seen how the stuff will play in the zone at the next level if he’s unable to coax the 34% chase rate he did in Triple-A.
Even if I’m being a little overly cautious with regard to the arsenal, a 24% K-BB will absolutely earn Cameron a shot. The southpaw profiles as a future back-end starter and his plus control makes him a worthy candidate for a handful of spot starts with the Royals in 2025.
Luinder Avila (SP/RP)
2024 MiLB (AA/AAA) Stats: 87 IP, 4.14 ERA, 3.82 FIP, 1.41 WHIP, 22.4% K, 12.4% BB, 26.6% CSW
Enter the polar opposite of Cameron. Avila is an electric right-hander who flashes upper-90s four-seamers and sinkers but without the same confidence in where they’ll land 60 feet later.
He compiled 20 starts in 2024, including 19 at Double-A before a late-season promotion led to a final start in Omaha, but his profile naturally leads to speculation he could reach the Big Leagues quicker in a relief role — and perhaps stick there.
In just six innings of work this spring, Avila’s loud arsenal made itself heard. He sat 97 MPH with the four-seam fastball and 96 MPH with the heavy-run sinker that bores in on righties. The high-spin curveball features two-plane break and his 91 MPH changeup gets good fade but tends to blend with the sinker with only 5 MPH of separation between the two offerings.
I’d tend to agree with the speculation around his prospects for making it to Kansas City in 2025 — he’s much more likely to get the call as a reliever should the Royals need late-summer reinforcements in the bullpen where his velocity can play to its maximum potential in shorter stints. Avila’s 45.8% whiff and 32.4% O-Swing rates in Spring Training are evidence of the nastiness he could potentially wield as a reliever.
Whatever the upcoming season may bring for Avila, I do hope he’s developed as a starter long-term with his immense upside.
Eric Cerantola (RP)
2024 MiLB (AA/AAA) Stats: 72.2 IP, 2.97 ERA, 4.40 FIP, 1.35 WHIP, 31.4% K, 15.5% BB, 32.9% CSW
Cerantola is a big, two-pitch righty who uses an extreme 65-degree arm angle to attack hitters straight over the top — that arm angle would’ve represented the second-highest among right-handers in the Major Leagues in 2024. He uses that steep plane to generate whiffs at an elite 55.6% rate with the gyro slider that he threw more than half the time last season, per Statcast, though FanGraphs charts him as throwing a cutter/slider mix that blends together.
I’m not a big believer in this profile at the next level; an 80 tjStuff+ four-seamer might be OK if it was complemented by another higher-level fastball variation and more offspeed options. Maybe I’m underselling the extreme arm angle and its deception, as he did show good swing-and-miss in the zone at Triple-A last year with a 75% Z-contact rate, but that’s asking a lot of one pitch (the slider) to be successful in the Bigs.
Fortunately for the Royals and Cerantola, there’s time for him to improve the fastball or add a pitch to his repertoire — the organization’s depth means he’s pretty low on the totem pole for a callup, but close enough to be included here should multiple injuries wipe that depth out.
Evan Sisk (RP)
2024 MiLB (AAA) Stats: 57.1 IP, 1.57 ERA, 2.26 FIP, 1.03 WHIP, 35.4% K, 11.4% BB, 32.6% CSW
Here we are again juxtaposing two opposite types of pitchers. Where Cerantola’s two-pitch mix seems to fall out of the sky, Sisk is a sidearming southpaw with a deeper arsenal consisting of a sinker, slider, cutter, curveball and seldom-used four-seam fastball. Sisk offered a changeup twice last season, per Statcast, and once this spring.
His 10-degree arm angle would’ve been the fourth-lowest among Major League lefties in 2024, and he uses it to generate big sweeping action on both the slider (36.6% chase, 42% whiff) and curveball (47.2% chase, 36.7% whiff) along with thumb-stinging run on the sinker.
While nothing in the arsenal leaps off the page in the tjStuff+ model, employing a variety of pitch types and shapes helps Sisk keep hitters off-balance. As you’d expect, he’s especially harsh to left-handed hitters, allowing just a .093 average and 0.66 WHIP in 2024, compared to a still-solid .221 average and middling 1.40 WHIP against righties. With the three-batter minimum now in place in MLB, the ability to get righties out from that arm slot is paramount to his future success.
Like Cerantola, he’s deep down the list of left-handed relief options for the Royals — behind Angel Zerpa, Sam Long (unless he’s DFA’d) and Daniel Lynch — but I’m far more confident in Sisk to get outs at the highest level. And far more confident he’ll be asked to do so at some point.
If the Royals had things their way, I’m sure they’d prefer these four to dominate in Omaha for another season without needing them in Kansas City in 2025. But things rarely go as planned, particularly in MLB, and it’s critical to have quality arms waiting in the wings when things go awry.
well done.
For the first time in a long time I'm excited about the Royals prospects and having fun learning about them!