Park Hill grad Carter Jensen turns in impressive performance for KC Royals’ Low-A club

Kansas City Royals prospect Carter Jensen wrapped his arms around the unrelenting daily grind, the draining physical and mental demands of playing catcher at the professional level, like a bear hug.

He welcomed the sweat, bruises, the preparation, and figurative chess match of that position while also making himself a factor offensively.

A Park Hill High School grad and native of Kansas City, Jensen made impressive strides, offensively and defensively, in his full season in the minors. He swung a potent bat and gained consistency in the dog days of the season.

The third-round pick of his hometown team in the 2021 MLB Draft, Jensen spent his first full professional season at Low-A Columbia and earned the club’s Player of the Year award.

The 6-foot-1, 210-pound left-handed hitting Jensen turned 19 in July. He was part of a quartet of prep prodigies the Royals used high draft picks on in 2021, along with his friend and fellow KC area standout Ben Kudrna (second round), Connecticut standout southpaw Frankie Mozzicato (first round) and hard-throwing New Jersey native Shane Panzini (fourth round).

All four spent the season with the Columbia Fireflies of the Carolina League. Kudrna was the team’s Pitcher of the Year.

“Baseball is a job now,” Jensen said. “But being with all these guys, it doesn’t really feel like a job. It feels like we’re just kids out there playing. That’s the best part. It’s so much fun. You learn so much about the game, about yourself and about other people that it’s really a special time to be in the situation that we’re in.”

That special time included some vivid memories, like when Jensen’s father came to town for the Fourth of July. He watched Columbia rally to force extra innings and then win 9-8 on a walk-off hit.

Jensen hit his ninth homer of the season that night in what he described as “probably my favorite game” of the year.

“We all finished in a dogpile,” Jensen said. “The fireworks went off. Just to have my dad there was awesome.”

Jensen grinds so that he can enjoy those types of moments.

A disciplined hitter

Jensen, who’d been committed to attend LSU, built a reputation as one of the best pure hitters among the draft-eligible players in the country in 2021.

He flashed some of that potential on the Royals Arizona Complex League team last fall when he slashed .281/.388/.404 with four extra-base hits in 19 games.

Then he bounced back from a December surgery to remove bone spurs in his right elbow and received clearance for full activities by mid-February.

In 113 games for Columbia, Jensen slashed .226/.363/.382 with 11 home runs, 66 runs scored, 24 doubles, two triples, 50 RBIs, 83 walks and eight stolen bases. He ranked third in the Carolina League in walks.

According to FanGraphs.com, Jensen is the first player 18-year-old (at the start of the season) since 2006 (when data is available) to record at least 10 home runs and at least 80 walks in a single minor-league season.

Jensen described his approach at the plate as “controlled aggressiveness,” and noted he feels like he has matured as a hitter by focusing on which pitches he can hit hard, studying pitchers ahead of time to understand what they pitches do and working to improve his pitch recognition.

In 22 games in August, Jensen batted .333 with nine RBIs, 24 walks with 11 extra-base hits.

A caretaker for the pitching staff

Behind the plate, Jensen has more responsibility than any other player on the field as both a game-caller and a receiver for the pitching staff.

Jensen said he called games coming up as a high school catcher as well as in travel ball, which helped him understand the importance of sequencing and approaching different types of hitters.

Part of his duties with the Columbia staff included learning the ins and outs of each pitcher “to a T.”

“It’s also really important to make sure you know all your guys,” Jensen said. “Also, it’s really important for them to trust you behind the plate and they feel like they can throw any pitch and you’re not going to let it go by or you’re going to stick it for a strike.”

Along with the daily work to improve his skills as a receiver and as a catch-and-throw asset against the running game, catchers must also be the ones who retain information, process the wealth of data on each opposing hitter to develop game plans and then make adjustments on the fly during games.

That extended to time away from the ballpark spent preparing.

“It’s really we’re never off the clock. We always have to make sure we’re doing something just to prepare us for the next day of the next month or week or whatever it is.”

Sorting through all the information can seem a daunting task, but Jensen didn’t shy away from that aspect.

“There is a lot of stuff that gets thrown at you, but it’s just making sure you slow the game down and really make sure that you’re taking in everything,” Jensen said.

A devoted young player

The first thing that jumped to the mind of Royals director of player development/field coordinator Mitch Maier in regards to Jensen’s progress was a single word:

Work.

“He showed up every day and busted his tail, which was really impressive,” Maier said. “Not that we ever questioned that. But when you get a chance to see it day in and day out and you see an 18-year-old, 19-year-old enduring a long season, catching more than he has ever caught, knowing the toll that takes on your body, the toll a long season takes on your body, seeing that level of consistency with the work and then you see the results and see him get better throughout the year, it’s really encouraging at such a young age.”

Maier found it most impressive that Jensen’s performance continued to improve as the season wore on and the accumulation of games and the daily workload piled up on his body.

At the plate, Jensen continued to get better and kept controlling the strike zone with his advanced plate discipline. He impressed the Royals player development staff with his hard-hit rates and his low swing-and-miss frequency.

He’s still just learning himself as a hitter, having not even turned 19 when the season started.

Considering Jensen’s age and the demands of his position, Maier called his first full season a “tremendous” year.

“He’s done a really good job at a really young age, and he’s gotten a lot better at catching,” Maier said. “J.C. Boscan was there all year with him, so being able to see him progress on his throwing, his blocking and watch him work every day. It’s really encouraging and he’s deserving of this honor (as Player of the Year).”

Maier was encouraged that Jensen embraced all the different aspects of catching, from working on his physical skills to building individual relationships with pitchers, game calling, and diagnosing each pitcher’s strengths and weaknesses and realizing how to utilizd it on a given night.

“Taking pride in that and having that want to with all the other things as a young player is impressive and it was really enjoyable to watch this year,” Maier said.