Bobby Witt Jr. is on the best stretch in Kansas City Royals history
The man responsible for the best season in Royals history sat in a spring training clubhouse on the heels of that season and talked about how he’d spent the winter looking back on it.
Bobby Witt Jr. didn’t feel he’d performed well in the previous postseason, all of a six-game sample size but enough to override the previous 162.
Or at least enough to be mixed into the evaluation. His initial description articulated the season’s conclusion as disappointing. His next summarized its entirety.
“What’s so great about this game,” he told me then, spring training of 2025, “is that you always want more, and you can always get better.”
A week from now and 18 months removed from that conversation, Witt is slated to start the All-Star Game for the first time, an honor bestowed not because he has remarkably improved but rather because he is consistently remarkable.
He has never stopped working on the perceived weaknesses, which generally derive from his own perception. That’s encompassed the mental approach as much as anything else, a routine down to the minute and with details as specific as leaving his iPhone nowhere near his bedtime stand so he can prevent impulsive distractions.
This kind of thing didn’t arrive by chance, in other words — even for a talent elite enough to be the No. 2 overall pick — but instead because he never has acted as though he’s arrived at all.
He has, of course. And it’s the consistency — not a single All-Star start of which his manager informed him in the clubhouse this weekend — that provides the most compelling case. Witt is on a generational run, though in terms of Royals history, that’s underselling it. He is on the best run his organization has ever seen.
Yes, this year, it has come on a last-place team. That’s all the more extraordinary, as I delved into earlier this season. But this is what the All-Star Game not only allows but accentuates — the opportunity to talk about the individual.
So, let’s.
Since the start of 2023, a stretch of 3 1/2 seasons, Witt has been the best position player in baseball, as measured by Fangraphs WAR metric (fWAR). He has totaled 28.9 fWAR in that time frame, edging Yankees superstar Aaron Judge, who is at 28.3. If the counterpoint is that’s because Aaron Judge has missed some time — and played in 85 fewer games — that should instead be part of Witt’s case. He has played the third most games over the last 3 1/2 years, and the second most with a single team. Braves first baseman Matt Olson is first.
Witt is the fifth most valuable offensive player in those 3 1/2 seasons, second in defensive value and fourth in baserunning. The latter requires we trace back to that 2025 spring training talk.
Witt finished with a 10.5 fWAR in 2024, best in Royals history, and he opened the conversation the following spring talking about baserunning. He’d stolen 31 bases, but had been caught stealing 12 times, third most in the majors, a total success rate of 72.1%.
On Sunday afternoon in a 5-2 win against the Phillies, Witt stole his 30th base. He’s been caught only four times, a total success rate of 88.2%. He is the first Royals player to reach 30 steals before the All-Star break since Tom Goodwin in 1997. That’s nearly three decades ago.
This is the why. This is the how.
In a year in which his slugging percentage has slightly dipped, Witt is every bit as valuable because he’s found other ways to bring it — because he’s obsessed with refining those other ways.
That reverts to the run he’s on, and you’ll have to travel back longer than three decades to find one to match it.
Witt has a 23.2 fWAR since the start of the 2024 season, a 2 1/2-year span. He is on pace for 27.8 over three years.
The best three-year run in Royals history is George Brett from 1978-80. His total fWAR: 23.4.
Witt is going to surpass that, possibly as soon as this week and likely before he actually starts in the All-Star Game for the first time. If he slumps at the plate, his defense and baserunning will still push the numbers forward. Which is the point. He has so many ways to impact a game, because he’s never stopped counting them himself.
George Brett is the clear-cut best player in Royals history not because of a year when he flirted with .400 into September; or the season prior when he led the league in hits for the third time; or the year prior to that when he led the league in doubles at age 25, which he’d do again at age 37; or the three years he led in slugging percentage and OPS; or the three years he led in triples; or the three times in won batting titles.
He is the best player in Royals history because he did all of that — because he was consistent.
That’s the class Witt is reaching. The All-Star start is the culmination of what’s already been great stretch — the best in Royals history.
But it’s the beginning of it.