It was a tough year to come up with a Royal minor league player of the year with so many outstanding performances. It started with Mike Montgomery and Eric Hosmer taking over Wilmington from the start of the year. Soon Mike Moustakas would get healthy and start his obliteration of minor league pitching on his way to a ton of Home Runs and extra base hits. John Lamb, Chris Dwyer and Wil Myers would all start to get take over in May and zoom thru levels of competition while Danny Duffy wouldn't be far behind. As the season wore on the pitchers either got challenged by injuries or extra levels as their production slowed. Myers, Moose and Hos excelled as they all got promoted a level and while Hosmer was probably the leader 3/4 of the way thru he gets a slight notch against him as his promotion probably helped his numbers more than the other two. That leaves Moose and Myers as my finalist.
Moustakas 35 Home Runs jumps off the page as do his 74 extra base hits compared to 65 strikeouts but in the end he played in two pretty decent hitting environments.
My Royal Minor League Player of the Year is Wil Myers. Wil put up a .916 OPS in two and a half months of the Midwest league as a 19 year old. He also hit 10 HRs in 239 ABs, at that pace he probably would have bested Moustakas 22 at the same level when he was 19. Myers then promoted to Wilmington a very difficult park on right-handers and a difficult hitting level in general. Wilmington was the same level that ate Hosmer and Moustakas up in 2009 but Myers would dominate with the bat from the moment he arrived. Absent of more HRs one can say nothing about Myers game other than he struggles behind the plate. Neither Moustakas or Hosmer are above average defenders so Myers difficulty behind the plate isn't that big of a hit against his season considering he is playing a more difficult position in general. At only 19 years old for him to have the type of year he has had at the two most difficult hitting environments in the Royals minor league system Myers has done enough to be my minor league player of the year.
