Gritty Kansas City Royals utilityman Whit Merrifield knows what you say about him
We turn on the TV and they’re always there, three hours a night for six months of the year so it’s easy to forget sometimes just how good the men on big league fields are at baseball.
Simply becoming one of the some 500,000 boys who make a high school team requires work and talent. Only one in 10 of them play in college, only one in 500 will be drafted, and less than one in 2,000 or so will ever make it to one of those big-league fields on your TV.
Staying there — particularly for those without the five-tool gifts of Mike Trout — requires a blend of obsession and drive and irrational confidence and even that’s not always enough.
“You have to have some (jerk) in you,” Royals outfielder Whit Merrifield said. “You have to have a sort of f-you attitude.”
This isn’t the way for everyone, but it is the way for Merrifield. Always has. From the moment he took his first swing in the majors in May 2016 he has been the Royals’ most valuable player, by far, and he’s done it with ... well, he’s done it with some (jerk) in him.
He was a College World Series hero, but unselected until the ninth round in 2010. He earned a big-league promotion by 2015, but at the last minute the Royals changed their minds and brought up a pitcher instead.
He was the logical choice for opening day second baseman the next season, but instead began in Omaha. Maybe some of this is why Merrifield feels chronically disrespected.
Maybe some of this is why — when Nicky Lopez’s promotion pushed Merrifield off his preferred second base — Merrifield re-framed the move to reporters, pointing out that he’d shifted positions in college to help his South Carolina teams find more offense and ended up winning awards for his defense in the outfield.
Maybe this is why Merrifield listens, not just to anyone in the industry who believes he’s a step below a star, but what’s said about him online by strangers.
“I hear what people say,” he said. “It’s, ‘There’s an aging curve,’ or I don’t hit for enough power, don’t walk enough, defensively I bounce around so I can’t stick in one spot. Stuff like that. It is what it is. Analytics has pushed people to focus on negatives instead of focus on what guys are doing. I think that, for sure.”
There are a few layers to peel away here. Merrifield believes perception of players was generally more positive in the 1990s, before advanced statistics became widely used.
He sees analytics as a tool to find bargains, and since there is always someone doing something better at a cheaper price, nobody is a bargain anymore. It’s an interesting thought, and one held by many players, even some who find value in the numbers.
But for now, let’s explore Merrifield’s mind a bit more. He is unquestionably accomplished. He’s an All-Star, having led the league in hits twice, stolen bases twice, and triples once. He is on a contract that could pay him more than $20 million.
And yet — he cares what a stranger with a Twitter account that includes seven random numbers thinks about him.
More specifically — he wants to care.
This is where it’s really interesting. Merrifield does not actively seek out disrespect. He is not searching his name online trying to find some random egghead who thinks he needs to hit more home runs. He doesn’t have to.
Like a lot of athletes and coaches, he has friends and family who send him stuff. Sometimes it can be a friend he hasn’t talked to in years who sends a link talking about him being slower than before.
This all comes up in a recent conversation at spring training, and at this point I told him there are a lot of people who say good things about him, too. He nodded. He knows. Then I asked if he knows there is a stack of negativity (you’re too old, not enough walks, whatever) and an equally tall stack of positivity (versatile, consistent, productive) whether he makes a conscious effort to pay more attention to the negative.
Whether he feels he should pay more attention to the negative, because that’s more helpful to him becoming a better player than listening to how great he is.
Merrifield let the question hang in the air a few seconds.
“I guess so,” he said. “Yeah. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s a good question. I never really thought about it that way.”
Another pause.
“As athletes, we like proving people wrong. We like talking trash back and forth. We like proving our point. I guess that’s just sort of instinctual with athletes, that we focus more on the negative. Not that I’m sitting here talking about it, it’s probably not the best way to go about it. Just kind of human nature.”
Merrifield’s specific grind is probably harder to pull off in baseball than other sports. Merrifield’s chosen profession is one of failure. He has made 1,828 outs in his career. In 2019 he made more outs than anyone else in the American League, and it was still an objectively productive season.
Most players fight this inherent duplicity by staying positive. If even the best hitters fail more often than they succeed, then everyone should celebrate the ups more than they curse the downs.
Merrifield has his own version of this. Since 2017, only Francisco Lindor has more plate appearances than Merrifield. He’s come to believe the best way to navigate his sport’s relentless grind is to know a heater can show up just as sudden and unexpectedly as a slump, and the best players figure out how to extend the former and disrupt the latter.
At least for Merrifield, he’s found the best way to do this is to have some (jerk) in him. Our conversation ended with me asking if he had the right amount.
“I hope so,” he said. “Depends on who you ask, I think.”