Whit Merrifield: A bat flip, a long journey here and a curious path forward

The baseball zoomed through the humid air, and in an instant everyone paying attention knew that even the league’s biggest outfield did not have enough room. Sometimes in sports — too often, really — guys are told to act like they’ve been there. But what if they haven’t?

Whit Merrifield, the nicest surprise in a Royals season full of plot twists, had done so much already in less than a month in the big leagues. He had started at three positions which, among other things, could be the single biggest reason Omar Infante is still on the roster.

He has had a nine-game hitting streak, including five in a row with two hits. His grandfather has become something of a niche legend, charming TV viewers with tales of driving across the country to see Whit, supposedly getting more fan mail than the grandchild back in Kansas City.

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But Merrifield had never hit a home run before in 90 plate appearances, so damn that tired old line about pretending like baseball needs to be treated like church, he watched the ball fly and held the bat in the air for a few beats before tossing it aside.

Which means, you know, if it wasn’t clear already: He’ll fit right in with this team.

“I keep telling them,” Merrifield said. “Everybody’s got cool handshakes. I just get this regular high five. Maybe we can think of something.”

Merrifield went 2-for-4 with a triple and a homer, scoring both runs in the Royals’ 2-1 win over the Indians on Monday. The Royals, for all their problems, are 33-30 and just two games behind the Indians for first place in the American League Central.

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Merrifield, the rookie who is older than veteran Eric Hosmer, is among the biggest reasons.

“This kid’s not a flash in the pan,” manager Ned Yost said. “His swing works up here. It’s very compact, very short, he covers the plate really, really well.”

Monday was just Merrifield’s 26th day in the big leagues, but already he had amassed more Wins Above Replacement than everyone but Salvador Perez, Lorenzo Cain, Hosmer, Wade Davis, Kelvin Herrera and Danny Duffy. And that was before what might’ve been his best game yet.

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If you’re not into the fancy stats, the conventional ones are good enough: .330 with 11 extra-base hits, 15 runs and seven RBIs in 22 games. He’s reached base at least once in all but one of his starts. His triple in the first was the Royals’ first in a full count since before the last road trip. The home run was on a 0-2 pitch.

Overlooked, but important all the same: He’s been nearly flawless in the field, with just one error while playing three positions, and on Monday helping turn three double plays.

For everything that has gone wrong with the Royals’ world championship encore — injuries, brawls, Kendrys Morales and the starting pitching — Merrifield is having the kind of breakout season you see on teams that end up in the playoffs.

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“I wasn’t planning on coming here and then going back,” he said.

The curious part is projecting this over the season’s final 99 games. Baseball history just doesn’t have a lot of examples of guys who break into the big leagues after their 27th birthday and end up being this productive long-term.

If you’re really good, you tend to make it to the big leagues before that. Scouts like to say the stars need two or three full seasons in the minors. Hosmer was drafted out of high school, and played his third season in Kansas City. Merrifield played three years in college — he had the walk-off hit in the College World Series final for South Carolina in his last game — and is playing his sixth pro season.

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In this century, the best rookies Merrifield’s age or older were both established international stars before coming to the big leagues. Ichiro Suzuki won the batting title in 2001 after signing from Japan, and Jose Abreu hit 36 home runs for the White Sox in 2014 after defecting from Cuba.

It’s interesting that the best American-born, 27-or-older rookie season this century came from Mike Aviles in 2008. Aviles was drafted as a four-year college player from a Division II school in New York, back in the days when the Royals targeted signability over ability.

Aviles never looked the part of a big league shortstop. Too squatty, not quick enough, so he went level-by-level in the minors and even repeated Class AAA Omaha — twice.

When the Royals finally decided Tony Pena Jr.’s bat was unplayable — he was hitting .157 with a .177 on-base percentage and .196 slugging percentage, and those numbers aren’t typos — the Royals played Aviles for a day, then sat him for a week while they tried three others before giving the job back to Aviles.

He hit .325, won the Royals’ player of the year award, and finished fourth in rookie of the year balloting. He hit .183 the next year, and 2008 remains, by far, his best big-league season.

That’s more than a remember-how-lost-the-Royals-used-to-be? story. It’s an example of just how hard it is to do what Merrifield is doing, the wind of circumstances that have to blow in a guy’s favor after the baseball industry decides what he is.

Merrifield isn’t working against an Avilesian gust. The Royals’ scouts have long liked him, but he never had a huge minor-league season until 2014, and by then the big-league roster was mostly set with others ahead of him in the queue.

Still, baseball people in general are an optimistic bunch who bring out their skepticism for 27-year-old rookies. There are no perfect baseball swings, and big-league pitchers have a way of identifying and exploiting weaknesses. The game has proven to be calibrated in a way that might allow for a hot start, but that’s it.

The important thing isn’t the instant success. Respect is earned after the league adjusts, and then adjusts again, targeting the softest part of a man’s game and forcing him to swim or drown.

That’s the test that awaits Merrifield in the coming weeks and months. He has shown nothing to suggest that will be a problem, but he is playing at a level that rarely if ever allows this specific kind of breakout for long.

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This story was originally published June 13, 2016 at 11:33 PM with the headline "Whit Merrifield: A bat flip, a long journey here and a curious path forward."