It's the Bobby Witt Jr. Show

Greatness on display nightly at The K.

He’s great. He’s Bobby Witt Jr.

Fresh off AL Player of the Week honors, the Royals shortstop is serving notice in the second half of the season. That’s after being selected to his first All-Star Game and reaching the final round of the Home Run Derby. Enter Kauffman Stadium on any given evening, and you are in the presence of greatness.

The only thing I can compare it to was when George Brett was in his prime. When Brett stepped into the batter’s box, an anticipation started to build. Something amazing was going to happen. The same thing with Bo Jackson, but to a lesser extent. Bo was about the raw power. The anticipation that came from watching him was wondering if you were about to see a baseball demolished in a unique fashion. No, the most comparable moment I can think of when Witt is at the plate is Brett.

I hate to hang that comp on Witt—a Hall of Famer and a third year player who is breaking out in every way—but who else is there to compare him to?

Monday night was just another chapter in the legend.

If you’re going to a Royals game, it’s imperative you’re in your seat by the bottom of the first inning. You do not want to be late. We’ve been bemoaning the lack of a decent leadoff option for the Royals this year. Can you imagine how good this offense would be if they just had someone league-average hitting in front of Witt? Witt is hitting a cool .347/.373/.531 in the first inning. That included eight doubles, a couple of home runs and, after yesterday, two triples.

Arizona starter Yilber Diaz started Witt off with a four-seamer up and out of the zone before following it up with a curve that hung in the zone for a strike. After an easy take on a fastball well off the plate, Diaz came back with another four-seamer. Like the other two, this was off the plate. Unlike the other two, it wasn’t far enough off the plate.

Witt puts such a nice, easy swing on this pitch. It’s coming in at 96 MPH so if Witt is going to try to pull it, he’s probably going to roll over. (Or maybe not, given how hot his bat is going at the moment.) Instead, he just goes with the pitch. It’s a swing borne of confidence.

You may believe the triple is the most exciting play in baseball. I’m not going to argue otherwise, but I will posit that if a triple is the most exciting play, a Bobby Witt Jr. triple is the maximum of excitement. I just love watching this guy turn on the afterburners and fly around the bases.

For real. You know that, from the location of the batted ball, that Witt is going three. Never a doubt. So you lock in on him running the bases. When he leans to the left to make that turn at second base, it’s a moment of understated grace. Then, as I’ve written about before, he finishes the sprint with an immaculate slide. He’s going to fast that once he hits the dirt, he barely slows down. He just glides to a stop, hand on the bag, triple in the boxscore.

These are the triples Witt has hit this year:

In your baseball mind, when you think triple, you think the one Witt hit on Monday night. But this spray chart is insane. Play him off the line in left, he can triple. Ball in the gap, he can triple. And of course, ball in the right field corner…triple.

Despite getting to third with fewer than two outs, Witt didn’t score. Vinnie Pasquantino did his best to collect another sacrifice fly, but didn’t drive the ball deep enough to center. The Royals did get a run in the second with a little two-out rally. Drew Waters walked, Maikel Garcia singled him to third and Kyle Isbel brought him home with another single.

That meant Witt lead off the bottom of the third. Diaz was working him away again. Fastball off the plate for ball one, followed by another fastball that caught the outside corner. With the count even, the right-hander went slider and slider. Both missed well off the plate.

At 3-1, Diaz served up another fastball. Witt was ready. Coming in at 95 MPH, with a red-hot hitter sitting fastball, it’s pitch begging to be crushed. I can safely report: It was crushed.

For baseball mortals, that’s not triple territory. But admit it: You thought he might be going for three. Credit to the Diamondbacks outfielders, specifically left fielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who covered the gap quickly. Witt made an aggressive turn at second, but held up. With nobody out, I think that’s the correct call. Although opening the game with back-to-back triples would’ve been insane.

That was Witt’s 27th double of the season. As you would expect, the spray chart of those hits shows no pattern. Only excellence.

The balls on the infield are low line drives that scream through the dirt. Think a launch angle between eight and four degrees. Perfectly positioned so that the outfielder needs to move quite a bit. It’s that kind of fraction that gives Witt the extra 90 feet. He didn’t need that on Monday’s double. With a ball drilled to the left-center gap, Witt had it covered all the way.

After Witt reached, he was singled home by Pasquantino and Salvy followed with a home run to give the Royals a 4-3 lead. The offense was rolling. That meant Witt came to the plate just an inning later.

Arizona manager Torey Lovullo went to his bullpen. Anything to stop Witt. Right-hander Miguel Castro was summoned. It didn’t work.

That’s a first-pitch, 94 MPH sinker that is about as middle-middle as you can get. What do you think a red-hot hitter is going to do with that?

Correct.

That’s 109 MPH off the bat with a distance of 431 feet. Do you ever wonder what a hitter thinks when he’s locked in at the plate and he sees a pitch coming in that’s center-cut like that sinker? Witt’s swing in this at bat is controlled violence. It’s a fat pitch and he puts an appropriate swing on it.

With that hit—remember, it was still just the third inning—it was the fourth game in a row Witt collected three hits in a game. It’s a short list of players who have done that in Royals history.

6 games - George Brett - May 8-13, 1976
4 games - Johnny Damon - July 18-21, 2000
4 games - Bobby Witt Jr - RIGHT NOW

Brett, I believe, still holds the major league record. It was kind of big deal back then. Enough to elicit his own baseball card to celebrate.

When Brett went on his run, he went 18-26 but just two of those hits went for extra bases—one double and one home run. He scored nine runs and drove in four.

Witt, by contrast, has gone 12-15 with five extra base hits. That’s two doubles, a triple and two homers. He’s collected six RBIs and scored seven times.

At this point, Witt was just a single away from the cycle. As you probably know, I’m a bit of a cycle geek. No idea how that happened. It’s not because I’ve seen a lot of those while watching the Royals. The Royals, as you also probably know, own the longest current cycle drought in baseball.

Brett was the last one to do it. That happened in 1990. I remember exactly where I was when that happened. Listening to the game on the radio in my car driving home from a Streetside Records. It doesn’t get any more early-90s than that.

The Royals have had six cycles in their team history:

Freddie Patek - 7/9/71
John Mayberry - 8/5/77
George Brett - 5/28/79
Frank White - 9/26/79
Frank White - 8/3/82
George Brett - 7/25/90

Patek and Mayberry would not be two Royals I would’ve guessed to have hit for the cycle. Patek hit 28 home runs in his nine years in Kansas City. Mayberry was not exactly a speedster. He hit 19 triples in his career. The year he went for the cycle, he hit…one triple.

As Witt has blossomed into this all-around superstar, I’ve been thinking about hitting for the cycle even more than usual. He’s going to do it. He’s going to do it multiple times. It’s just a matter of time. The only question is, if he’s just short of the cycle by a single, is that like being a triple short for a mortal major leaguer? I ask that question because every time he jumps out of the box, it’s pretty clear the guy is thinking two bases at a minimum. Unless he’s legging out an infield hit, he has extra bases on his mind.

That was what I was thinking about when Witt came to the plate in the sixth with a chance for history. I did not expect this.

Straight-up bush league action from reliever Humberto Castellanos. Here’s the deal: I don’t think he was doing that on purpose. I think he was trying to come inside and the sinker just ran away from him. I’m basing opinion off of his reaction. Still, in that situation, in that moment, you cannot allow that to happen. No, don’t serve him another center-cut pitch. You have to stay aggressive or Witt’s going to destroy you. But you absolutely cannot let that pitch get away. First pitch to the opponent’s best hitter who happens to be scorching hot at the plate who is just a single away from the cycle?

The Captain was everybody in that moment.

Here’s what Salvy had to say after the game:

“I don’t like the way it looks, honest to you guys. Three-for-three, trying to get a hit for the cycle. …

“I’m going to have Junior’s back.”

I think, in that moment, all of Kauffman Stadium had Junior’s back.

Witt went to second on a Pasquantino single and scored on a Perez sacrifice fly. Revenge? Perhaps. But this is baseball. Scores are settled in a different fashion. So when reliever John Schreiber took the ball in the seventh, we were left to wonder if he would be the one to deliver justice for Junior.

These things play out differently. Arizona plunked the Royals best hitter. Do you go after theirs? Or do you go the old-fashioned route and hit their catcher. It just so happened that Gabriel Moreno was the second man up in the inning. So with two outs and nobody on base, Schreiber drilled Moreno on 2-1 sinker.

That brought warnings and an eventual ejection from Lovullo. The Arizona manager seemed to motion to Perez when he came out to argue with the home plate umpire. Perez moved closer which meant Matt Quatraro had to come out. It was a bizarre confrontation that felt wholly unnecessary.

“What I said was: 'If you think in your right mind that I was going to ask our team to hit the future of Major League Baseball, one of the best players in Major League Baseball, you’re crazy,'” Lovullo said. “And you’ve lost control of this situation. And you got it wrong. That’s what I said to [home-plate umpire] Jordan Baker, and I wanted Salvy to hear that. I wanted him to take it back to their dugout and make sure that he understood that that’s how I felt. And that’s how I feel about Bobby Witt Jr. He’s an unbelievable player.”

Nice of Lovullo to acknowledge that Witt is unbelievable. Weird that he thought the scenario that happened in the top of the seventh wasn’t going to unfold in the exact manner that occurred.

Witt had one more shot at history, in the eighth inning, again against Castellanos. He flew out to right to end his evening 3-4 with a double, a triple, a home run. He scored three runs and drove in three.

It was a signature performance from one of the best players in the game. We are watching greatness unfold on a nightly basis in Kansas City.

The Royals won 10-4. They are in the hunt for October. They have one of the best players in the game doing amazing things. Baseball is alive in Kansas City.