The reasons (besides talent) Witt might actually make KC Royals’ opening day roster
A decision without precedent in baseball begins because of a talent with few precedents.
Bobby Witt Jr. is different. We’ve known that for a while now. When the Royals made him the second overall pick in the 2019 draft, Jim Callis — who is perhaps more qualified than anyone on the planet to make this call — labeled Witt Jr. as baseball’s best shortstop prospect since Alex Rodriguez.
He is both fast and powerful, blessed with a strong arm, driven by a relentless desire to improve, all of it wrapped in a respectful and professional way that’s turned a fairly veteran clubhouse into something like a Bobby Witt Jr. fan club.
All of those factors are crucial to creating a new reality in which the Royals are absolutely, 100 percent, considering Witt Jr. skipping all traditional levels of the minor leagues and being in the Royals opening day lineup.
“He’s earned the respect of all his teammates, and now that he’s been able to do that, I’m very much open-minded of him being on this team as we break camp,” general manager Dayton Moore said in an interview on Fantasy Alarm.
This messaging is intentional. Moore’s front office is guided by particular rules. Don’t put limitations or unfair expectations on players. Believe what you see, not what you think. Don’t make decisions on players until you have to.
Quietly, they have hoped this is how it would go. Now they’re more public about it, at least in part to see how the kid reacts his new reality.
Witt Jr. has a real chance to skip Class A, Class AA, and Class AAA — going straight from 37 games of Rookie ball to the major leagues and here’s how quickly things are moving for him in a sport where things rarely move quickly.
A week ago, the idea of Witt Jr. skipping the line was generally met with a chuckle. Today — right now and through the final days before the Royals make final cuts — the idea has enough traction that Witt Jr. will be in the lineup more, and against the best pitching.
In short, Royals coaches and club officials want to get as much information as possible about what to do with one of the best prospects in franchise history.
This is not a column stating the Royals will or even should put Witt Jr. on the opening day roster.
This is a column stating the Royals are giving far more consideration to the idea than they expected when planning for spring training, and even more consideration than they gave a few days ago.
The momentum is building, in other words, and part of why the Royals have a decision without precedent is because the current context is without precedent.
Because the decision isn’t whether to put Witt Jr. in the big leagues or the minor leagues. The decision is whether to put Witt Jr. in the big leagues or the alternate site, where he’d be playing something less than real baseball games.
For an organization with a proven record of putting development first and service time games never, that’s a real factor.
Of all the problems in baseball, this is one of the most obvious: teams are motivated to keep their best players in the minor leagues longer than is necessary in order to secure more years of club control.
The Royals are among the few teams who don’t do that. The most recent example came last summer, when the Royals started Brady Singer in the second game of the season even as waiting just a few days would have delayed his scheduled free agency an entire year.
To put it more succinctly, the Royals potentially traded a few days of Singer at 23 years old for an entire year of him at 29.
They did it because they felt it was in the best interests of both the player and the big-league club in the moment. They have a long record of similar decisions.
That organizational honesty — and this is beside the point, but some executives around baseball would call it naivety — means Witt Jr.’s credentials will be analyzed without agenda.
Some GMs obsess over that extra year of club control. Moore thinks about what to him would be the nightmare scenario — the Royals keep Witt Jr. down an extra few weeks to manipulate service time, and the team ends the season a game or two out of the playoffs.
Witt Jr.’s credentials present a compelling case.
The Royals have handled this deliberately, carefully, and intelligently. They are not putting Witt Jr. on many Zoom calls, even after games he stars. There is a certain order things have to happen, and the Royals are respecting that even as Witt Jr. is fast-forwarding the whole thing.
Witt Jr.’s place on the opening day roster should be objectively unlikely because of all the pieces that have to be in place. But his place on the opening day roster is an increasingly real conversation because all of those pieces seem to be in place.
He is wildly talented, and producing against the best competition the Royals are putting him in front of. He presents himself in a way that makes older teammates push for him, and the improvement of Seuly Matias and others has encouraged club officials about the usefulness of last summer’s alternate site.
One more time: None of this means Witt Jr. will make his big league debut on opening day against the Rangers, two months before his 21st birthday.
But it does mean the pieces are in place for it to happen, that he has an open-minded front office, aggressive coaching staff, and supportive teammates.
The Royals have two weeks of spring training left, and these will be among the most determinative of Witt Jr.’s young career. He has everyone’s attention now, and he knows it. They want to see how he responds, and he knows that, too.
Witt Jr.’s big league career is an inevitability. These two weeks will determine how quickly it starts.
This story was originally published March 17, 2021 at 9:53 AM.