They grew up Royals fans in Kansas City, now they’re on the team in spring training
The Kansas City Royals created the fondest and most vivid baseball memories for Carter Jensen and Ben Kudrna, and the team helped shape their amateur careers.
Last July, the two former Kansas City area high school standouts began one of those pinch-me-this-can’t-be-real scenarios together as MLB Draft picks of their hometown Royals.
The Royals plucked the right-handed pitching Kudrna, an Overland Park resident, with their second-round draft pick (43rd overall) out of Blue Valley Southwest High School. Then they selected the left-handed hitting catcher Jensen, a Kansas City resident, with their third-round pick (78th overall) out of Park Hill.
“The best way to describe it is a dream come true, growing up in Kansas City, going to Royals games as a kid, having those be some of the best memories I have with my family, my friends,” Jensen said following a recent workout at the Royals spring training facility in Arizona.
Kudrna and Jensen both played on the Royals Scout Team, a grassroots program for select players run under the umbrella of the Royals scouting department and the Urban Youth Academy.
That experience not only allowed them to play alongside and against each other during the scrimmages, it also allowed them to become familiar with some of the Royals officials including the local scouts.
Big-league memories and motivation
Both Jensen and Kudrna grew up watching one of the most majestic periods of the franchise’s history.
They’re children of the Royals’ 2014 and 2015 World Series runs and the 2015 championship, the first in 30 years for the franchise.
Kudrna didn’t have to think too long in order to rattle off one of the first baseball memories. As a sixth grader, he sat in the dugout suites at Kauffman Stadium with his dad.
The details of the game itself are hazy, but he joyfully recalled the excitement of being a big-league game, the atmosphere, seeing the ballpark from field level and meeting team mascot Sluggerrr.
Then of course there’s the time he attended The Game.
Perhaps the seminal moment of the Royals playoff runs came in the form of the 2014 AL Wild Card Game against the Oakland Athletics, a one-game showdown for the right to advance to play the Los Angeles Angels in the Division Series.
Kudrna was there for the epic come-from-behind walk-off win in 12 innings. At the time, that tied the MLB record for the longest winner-take-all game in postseason history, by innings.
“That was probably my best memory,” Kudrna said.
Royals star catcher Salvador Perez famously hit the walk-off RBI single that drove in Christian Colon as the winning run.
What was Kudrna’s reaction in that moment?
“Screaming and yelling,” Kudrna said. “We were there the whole game. The atmosphere at Kauffman when it comes to playoff baseball is unbeatable because it’s one city and one stadium. I don’t think I sat that whole game. I didn’t get up. I didn’t move.
“When we hit the walk-off, I went berserk and I went nuts and I would say everyone around us was too. That was probably one of my coolest baseball experiences from a fan standpoint.”
Jensen has numerous happy memories of darting around Kauffman Stadium in an attempt to corral foul balls that went into the stands. Failing that, he’d try his best to coax a batboy to slip him a ball.
His success rate coming away with baseballs varied, but he certainly made himself at home in the friendly confines of “The K” growing up.
Then came the 2014 World Series against the San Francisco Giants. Jensen attended one of the games in Kansas City, and it left a lasting impression on him.
“[It’s] definitely a night I’ll remember for the rest of my life,” Jensen said.
More than a memory, Jensen described that moment as motivation.
Having soaked up that experience from the stands of Kauffman Stadium, it will now fuel his desire to help the Royals get back to those lofty heights so he can experience a World Series as a player for his hometown club.
Becoming Royals together
As the draft approached, Kudrna felt more confident that he’d have a strong chance of being the Royals’ pick.
“It was a good feeling,” Kudrna said. “It was a hopeful feeling. Obviously as we got closer to the draft and some things started to play out, I think the day before the draft we had a pretty good feeling.
“I was awfully excited the night before and when I woke up, knowing that as long as nothing funky happened — which can, in the draft — we were in a pretty good spot. So I was excited.”
Rated a Top 50 prospect by Baseball America and MLB.com and regarded among the top pitchers if not the top high school pitcher in the Midwest, Kudrna went 9-1 with a 0.99 ERA, 100 strikeouts and 11 walks in 57 1/3 innings as a senior. He also posted a 0.67 WHIP and opponents batted .130 against him.
He featured a fastball with a velocity that sat in the mid-90s and reached as high as 97 mph.
The Royals made him the highest-drafted Kansas high school player since the Colorado Rockies selected Riley Pint out of St. Thomas Aquinas with the fourth overall pick in 2016.
“I knew, draft possibility, his chances were really high,” Kudrna said of Jensen. “So I was excited for him. We were talking, planning out, ‘Where do you want to go? Where would be cool do you think?’
“Then after I heard my name get called, I was answering phone calls and congratulations. Everything was a bit frantic, then I finally had a chance to sit back down. Someone happened to text me and they were like, ‘Did you see they took Carter too?’”
Baseball America and MLB.com ranked Jensen a Top 100 prospect in the draft class. One of the top high school catchers in the country, he was viewed as a pure hitter coming out of high school.
Carter registered a .387 batting avg. and a .578 on-base percentage as a senior. He led the team with 34 walks and had 25 RBIs, two triples and one home run.
“It’s still really hard to describe the feeling on draft day,” Jensen said. “Just knowing that it was official that I was going to be a Royal for real. To get this opportunity, it’s just been a real blessing. It still really hasn’t settled in with me. I still wake up every day and I’m just excited to be with this organization.”
Both Kudrna and Jensen had committed to play collegiately at LSU. They planned to be roommates on campus in Baton Rouge.
Kudrna waited about an hour after Jensen’s selection before he called his buddy and said, “Well, Scout Team now on the actual Royals. Let’s do this thing.”
“It was awesome. It was a really cool experience,” Kudrna said.
Just getting started
The 6-foot-1, 210-pound Jensen jumped into competition last summer.
Some of his first few at-bats in Arizona came against Royals rehab pitchers, including right-hander Jakob Junis, an established big-league pitcher who’d been the workhorse of the Royals rotation in previous seasons.
Jensen got into games last year playing on the Royals Arizona Complex League team. In his first foray into professional baseball, Jensen slashed .281/.388/.404 with four extra-base hits in 19 games.
“There’s of course a jump with the competition, but I feel like I did a pretty good job of keeping up with that and, I guess, evolving my game to compete the way I want to,” Jensen said. “But it has been a lot of fun. I’m really excited for this upcoming season, the first full season.”
In December, Jensen had surgery to remove bone spurs in his right elbow. However, he received full clearance without restrictions hitting or throwing in mid-February.
MLBPipeline.com ranked Jensen the 20th-best prospect in the organization despite him barely having gotten his feet wet.
Meanwhile, the 6-foot-3 Kudrna has already experienced a physical transformation.
Kudrna entered the organization weighing between 175 and 180 pounds, capable of burning off five pounds a lot quicker than it took for him to gain them.
This winter on the verge of minor-league camp in Arizona, he weighed 212 pounds after having packed on “good weight.” He credited the Royals’ registered sports dietitian Erika Wincheski for facilitating his weight gain.
Kudrna spent last summer and fall pitching and training at the Royals facility in Arizona and going through instructional ball. He did not pitch in minor-league games.
“I’ve seen myself develop more than I probably have in the past two or three years,” Kudrna said. “That part has been awesome. Truly kind of being introduced to what being a Royal is about and getting to be surrounded by all these people is incredible because they pour into you every day.”
That didn’t stop Baseball America and MLBPipeline.com from ranking him the eight-best prospect in the Royals farm system. He’s poised to start his professional career in the minors this season.
He’ll certainly have a built-in fan base along the way.
“It has been cool for my family,” Kudrna said. “Obviously, they’re all Royals fans too so they were super happy about it. Even though my minor-league journey, my mom and dad are excited because High-A, Double-A and Triple-A are all in a very close area. They can come watch.
“The rest of my family is super-excited. My aunt has gotten huge into cards. She has been buying my cards on eBay and following baseball really close now.”
