Patrick Mahomes, Bobby Witt Jr. share some compelling traits. Let their trainer explain
Let’s begin by stamping an asterisk on a caution flag dangling from a flashing yellow light: If the breathless anticipation of the impending arrival in Kansas City of Royals mega-prospect Bobby Witt Jr. echoes the hyperventilating between the time Patrick Mahomes was drafted by the Chiefs in 2017 and became their full-time starter in 2018, well, it hardly guarantees a parallel impact.
“I would love for you to quote me as saying that Bobby hasn’t earned the right to be mentioned as the same as Patrick,” said Bobby Stroupe, who has trained Mahomes since he was in elementary school and only last fall began training Witt — the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 Major League Baseball draft who will start the season in the minor leagues despite a mesmerizing spring training performance.
Indeed, there are ample reasons to qualify a point that we’re going to try to make, anyway, starting with the simple given that the quarterback position is a singular point of leverage and influence on a game that is hard to replicate in baseball.
But the concept doesn’t have to be a perfect parallel to have resonance and traction. Even Royals general manager Dayton Moore illustrated that early in 2019 when he met with shortstop Adalberto Mondesi in the Dominican Republic.
When he asked Mondesi if he’d followed the success “of this amazing athlete” — Mahomes — Mondesi nodded. When Moore asked if he knew of anyone with similar athletic ability, Mondesi smiled.
“You have that type of athletic ability,” Moore told him. “You have the ability to take over a baseball game. You’re one of the very best athletes who puts on a baseball uniform each and every night.”
Glimpses of stardom notwithstanding, alas, Mondesi has yet to provide the consistent impact and influence Moore envisions. And while he remains young at 25, just two months older than the still-budding Mahomes, it’s also possible that embracing such an ask either is outside Mondesi’s understated persona, or has even weighed on him.
And here’s where we will gently tread on more compatible points of comparison between Mahomes and Witt, points that include but go beyond both being the Texas-born sons of longtime major-league pitchers who possess fiendish work ethic and are being trained by Stroupe — who happily entertained the topic despite knowing it’s early in this tale.
Never mind that Mahomes and Witt haven’t met in person yet, though they do text each other, and the quirky twist to the relationship created when Mahomes bought a stake in the Royals last summer.
“Now Patrick’s got a pretty keen interest in Bobby, because he’s an owner of the Royals,” Stroupe said, laughing. “So Patrick was really excited Bobby was working with us because he thinks it’s going to help. And then when I was texting (Mahomes), telling him, ‘This is some of the stuff your boy is doing ...’
“He was fired up because he knows those things are going to translate.”
Noting that Mahomes has tweeted about Witt, as he did the other day when Witt bashed a 484-foot home run, Stroupe figured there will be a distinct public relationship between them before long.
“They’re connected now,” said Stroupe, founder and president of Athlete Performance Enhancement Center (APEC), headquartered in Tyler, Texas. “And they’re going to be connected for a long time.”
The ties that bind them are both tangible and intangible, reflecting both rare innate talent, similar mindsets and auras. Pour that together and you get an “it” factor that, for instance, is part of why Stroupe reckons it would be no burden on Witt to discuss shared qualities in their makeup.
Start with true and pure love of their respective games, something Stroupe has long known about Mahomes but recognized immediately in his first in-person meeting with Witt last fall at a downtown Kansas City hotel.
Proceed to what Stroupe calls their “incredibly positive” energy: Stroupe says he’s never heard either offer a negative comment or complaint.
“And what I mean by that is they’re just not going to speak that into existence; they’re not going to say it,” he said. “And they honestly don’t hang around people, or even stand around people, in workouts, who are doing that.”
Call it a cliche, but there is something geometrically galvanizing and infectious when the best players are the hardest workers and most upbeat presences — something that rings remarkably alike in the awed way teammates spoke of Mahomes in his apprentice year behind Alex Smith and of Witt at spring training this year.
“A candle doesn’t burn out by lighting other candles,” Stroupe said. “And those two guys, they get it: They understand that energy gives energy. And the only way to succeed is to connect with people.”
Put another way, Stroupe says their role in the “characteristic spirit of the culture around them, their ethos, is incredibly similar.”
That positivity feeds into something else, too: the sense that there are no boundaries on what’s possible, and even that expectations aren’t burdens.
“That’s not really how they deal with themselves or speak to themselves,” he said. “They’re in the moment.”
You’ve seen the riveting manifestation of all that in the ever-unfazed and visionary way Mahomes plays the game, but that’s also true in his training … and now Witt’s.
“They’re open-minded: These two guys don’t need to have seen someone else do it to try it,” Stroupe said. “And you’ve got to have a certain type of confidence and creative space in your mental approach to do that.”
By way of example, Stroupe said he doesn’t typically employ a lot of agility drills with cones because that defines a path when he wants to encourage freedom of movement. Mahomes and Witt relish that, because of their special combinations of aptitudes and attitudes.
As it happens, they each seem to have their own notions of the laws of freedom of movement, disdain for customary boundaries and approaches to being “problem-solvers physically,” as Stroupe put it.
“When you have a dolphin like Bobby and Patrick, you don’t quit letting them bounce the ball,” he said. “You don’t do stuff to restrict them and show them which way they’ve got to swim. … They’ll show you where they are.”
In the case of Mahomes, that instinct has been amplified by his collaborative mind-meld with coach Andy Reid, an offensive genius whose own creativity has been further engaged and enlivened by Mahomes. It led the Chiefs to the AFC Championship Game in Mahomes’ first season as a starter, the team’s first Super Bowl triumph in 50 years in Mahomes’ second season as a starter and a return to the Super Bowl last season only to get clobbered by Tampa Bay.
In ways that absolutely remain to be seen with Witt, Mahomes has been transcendent. And more of the same looms, even if he still is rehabilitating from surgery for turf toe that he underwent a few days after the Super Bowl.
Largely deferring to the Chiefs on Mahomes’ progress, Stroupe said their medical staff has done a great job with Mahomes and that he’s making “phenomenal progress,” though he declined to elaborate.
But after what he called a “heavy” year, between Mahomes taking the typical “carnage” on the field and being involved in social justice initiatives and fiancee Brittany Matthews giving birth to daughter Sterling Skye Mahomes last month, Stroupe had figured all along they would take a bigger break this offseason than normal.
So even if it will be a while before they produce any more of what he called those “Rocky montages” of Mahomes’ workouts, Stroupe believes Mahomes can benefit by slowing down and spending time on biomechanical and postural work.
Meanwhile, the Royals will be continually assessing their posture on Witt, who has played only 37 professional games (rookie league in 2019) and can’t be hurt by some seasoning … but also might be expected to be playing soon at a theater near you.
Through 20 years in this work with a number of professional athletes and many others, Stroupe has come to be able to recognize when someone is just different — like Mahomes and Witt.
From Stroupe’s standpoint, which he allows is biased and not from the perspective of someone running a team, Witt is ready now for all the aforementioned reasons and the maturity and grit to handle the slumps inherent in baseball.
As for practicing all due caution, including that Witt himself knows he hasn’t earned some of this praise and must continue to improve? Well …
“It’s fun to compare. It’s fun to say ‘what if?’ It’s fun to say look at these two special young talents in the same city,” Stroupe said. “And who knows when that’s going to happen? But this kid is going to bring life and energy and talent, and he’s going to bring wins to Kansas City.”
He added, “Bobby has got to go do it, and he hasn’t yet. And that’s not pressure; that’s just a fact. So we just need to enjoy what’s going on right now and not project or forecast and let this kid show us what he wants to do with this game.
“Because that’s what he’s going to do: He’s going to show us. … Let him show us. Just like Patrick did. And let’s enjoy it.”
This story was originally published March 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.