A ‘shortstop tools bonanza’: Praise for Kansas City Royals prospect Bobby Witt Jr.
Count ESPN MLB Insider Kiley McDaniel among the loyal parishioners of the Baseball Church of Bobby Witt Jr. The Kansas City Royals young potential star and a consensus top-three prospect in baseball earned high praise from McDaniel, who recently published his Top 100 prospects heading into 2022.
Witt, a shortstop who earned Minor League Player of the Year honors from Baseball America and USA Today following last season, placed second on McDaniel’s Top 100 behind Baltimore Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman, who preceded Witt in the 2019 MLB Draft.
Witt was the second overall pick in that draft after the Orioles selected Rutschman first.
A former scout and front office executive who worked for New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles, Pittsburgh Pirates and Atlanta Braves and also co-authored the 2020 book “Future Value: The Battle for Baseball’s Soul and How Teams Will Find the Next Superstar,” McDaniel described the 21-year-old Witt as a “shortstop tools bonanza” and compared him to multi-time major-league All-Star shortstops Carlos Correa or Trevor Story in his Top 100 breakdown.
During a conference call on Wednesday, McDaniel expounded on what makes Witt different from some of the other elite prospects.
“There’s plenty of guys that are shortstops with some history and some tools,” McDaniel said when by The Star about Witt. “I don’t know, there’s probably 15 or 20 of them however you want to define that on the list.”
Witt, a 21-year-old right-handed hitting phenom, will be vying for a spot on the Royals major-league club this spring. He has long been viewed as a five-tool player with above average ability to hit, hit for power, run, field and throw.
The “separator” for Witt is that at the age of being a college junior he has already performed at the Triple-A level and the case could’ve been made to put him in the big leagues last year, McDaniel explained.
Last year in his first full season in the minors, Witt slashed .290/.361/.575 with 33 home runs, 35 doubles, 29 stolen bases and 97 RBIs in 123 games (61 at Double-A, 62 at Triple-A).
“You take that performance and it puts him ahead of basically every other shortstop, maybe every hitter in the minor leagues just starting there with the raw performance stuff,” McDaniel said.
“Then you go back to my history with him going to his sophomore year in high school being probably the best player on the field playing with players probably two-three years older than him, where that two or three years is a huge difference, and putting up exit velos of 110 miles per hour when he’s a sophomore in high school. He’s been sort of exemplary, top of the scale, at something basically every time I’ve ever seen him.”
Coming out of Colleyville Heritage High School in 2019 where he helped his team win a state championship, Witt garnered Gatorade National Player of the Year honors.
“But compared to these other guys on (the Top 100) right now, there’s a lot of guys that play his position that are pretty good hitters,” McDaniel continued. “He has that in common with a number of guys. But to be able to do that and hit for power against guys that are much older than him and close to big-league level and, obviously at spring training against some big-league pitchers, the power and the in-game power performance — the exit velos or however you want to categorize that power performance — that’s the thing that’s unique to him compared to all the other guys on the list.”
Typically, a shortstop with power potential usually comes with one major caveat or another such as he’s not a good overall hitter or has a bad approach or he’s not showing that power in games, McDaniel explained before he added in summation, “Something’s not quite there.”
Whereas Witt “takes all those components of power and makes them play.”
That’s Witt’s “unique element” in McDaniel’s view.
Melendez and Pratto also among Top 100
Royals minor-league catcher MJ Melendez ranked 24th on McDaniel’s list, while first baseman Nick Pratto ranked 78th.
Both players enjoyed stellar bounce-back seasons in 2021 after having struggled badly at the plate in 2019. They were both named to Baseball America’s Minor League All-Star Team and finished the season at Triple-A.
“They’re good examples of guys that improved behind closed doors in ways that we couldn’t properly contextualize because they didn’t have competitive competition to sort of hang on it,” McDaniel said.
Melendez slashed .288/.386/.625 and launched 41 home runs in 123 games between Double-A (28) and Triple-A (13) in 2021. He was the first player since 2016 to hit 40 homers or more in a single minor-league season.
Pratto slashed .265/.385/.602 with 36 home runs, 98 RBIs and won a minor-league Gold Glove Award.
“Those two and [Yankees prospect] Anthony Volpe are probably the three biggest jumps out of nowhere,” McDaniel said. “You know, they’re good players with good tools that I really liked two or three years ago. But nobody saw this coming. I think it’s another point in the favor of really good hitting coaches can dramatically change someone’s fortune.”
McDaniel also acknowledged that there were likely non-measurable elements such as connecting with certain coaches and self confidence that were also critical to their turnarounds.
Still skeptical on Lacy
Royals top pitching prospect Asa Lacy didn’t make McDaniel’s list. McDaniel has not been as high on the former Texas A&M left-hander as some other evaluators were coming out of college.
In McDaniel’s view, Lacy profiled as a more “risky” subset of player than other pitchers in his draft class, exceling more with “stuff” than “command,” and McDaniel had some concerns with Lacy’s pitching delivery.
After being drafted during the pandemic season of 2020, Lacy made 14 starts for High-A Quad Cities before shoulder soreness sidelined him from late July until the Arizona Fall League.
“I thought that was a wait and see guy,” McDaniel said. “I think some people didn’t think that was a wait and see guy. Now, we’re waiting and seeing. I think he’s a big leaguer of some sort, and I don’t really know where it’s going to go from there because of the kind of guy he is, the age he is at with what he has been able to prove on the field, I don’t think is quite enough for me to have a lot of confidence in exactly what he’ll be.
“I think he’ll be at least an eight inning guy and maybe as good as a No. 2 starter. That’s a pretty wide gap for a guy at that age.”
This story was originally published February 24, 2022 at 9:56 AM.
