Carter Jensen: Royals 2025 Minor League Player Of The Year
It would be easy to simply categorize Carter Jensen’s season as a breakout for the 22-year-old catcher, especially with the Kansas City-area native ending the campaign with his first callup to the major league team he grew up following.
But really, his success stems from continuing to build on the growth he has exhibited in each of his pro seasons since the Royals drafted him in the third round in 2021.
Jensen split this season between Double-A Northwest Arkansas and Triple-A Omaha and batted .290/.377/.501 with 20 home runs in 111 games.
It wasn’t just his offense that took a big step forward. According to a National League pro scout, Jensen took big steps forward with his defense behind the plate.
Throughout his career, Jensen has consistently drawn plenty of walks, resulting in high on-base percentages but always countered by lower batting averages. A cursory look at his numbers would indicate that his improvement was a matter of becoming more aggressive at the plate.
Not so according to Royals farm director/field coordinator Mitch Maier.
“You’re just seeing the natural development of a young hitter who had a really good feel for the strike zone and a really good feel to hit,” Maier said. “We didn’t want him to get overaggressive and lose what he was really good at, which was controlling the strike zone.”
Another key for Jensen was using the whole field instead of being more pull-heavy. In past years his pull rate would hover near 50%, but in 2025 it was 38%.
Other metrics that demonstrated Jensen’s improvement were his average exit velocity, which jumped by 4.6 mph, and his zone-contact rate, which increased to nearly 87% at Triple-A.
It’s who Jensen is as a person that will have as much as anything to do with his success.
“He’s extremely mature with the way he goes about his business, his routines and his offseasons,” Maier said. “As a young player at a demanding position, it’s really helped him improve on both sides of the baseball. That’s why we’ve seen him advance as quickly as he has.”
Royalties
The Surprise Saguaros project to have one of the best arrays of prospects in this year’s Arizona Fall League, thanks in part to the group of players from the Royals.
Most notable is the organization’s No. 2 prospect, catcher Blake Mitchell, looking to make up for lost time in 2025 to a hand injury. Other Royals farmhands on the Surprise roster include pitchers A.J. Causey, Dennis Colleran, L.P. Langevin, Logan Martin and Hunter Owen, infielder Daniel Vazquez and outfielder Carson Roccaforte.
