What Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr. learned from trying to ‘change the team’ as rookie
Anointed the would-be savior of the Royals before he played his first major-league game, Bobby Witt Jr. somehow was unfazed by all the commotion last season.
At least from the outside looking in.
Then 21 and rated MLB.com’s top prospect in baseball, he didn’t flinch hearing his name chanted and receiving a standing ovation before his first at-bat on Opening Day against Cleveland.
Foreshadowing an inaugural season in which he’d be named the franchise player of the year, he magically met the moment with a two-out RBI double that broke a 1-1 eighth-inning tie in what became a 3-1 victory.
“Couldn’t have scripted that better, right?” then-manager Mike Matheny said afterward.
Drenched with a celebratory cooler of ice water on the field after the game, Witt’s return to the clubhouse was distinguished by another sort of baptism: Teammates plopped him in a rolling laundry basket, wheeled it into the kitchen and splashed him in about every liquid within reach as a rite of initiation.
“Y’all’s job is to hype him up,” Whit Merrifield told reporters after the game. “Our job is to keep him grounded.”
Turned out that notion was redundant at best when it came to the unassuming and strikingly mature Witt. By all accounts, few his age are more grounded.
The real challenge for him was somewhat the opposite: reconciling what he calls the failures and struggles — such as they were — of a rookie season he entered lugging more emotional weight than was evident.
“I definitely think that I put pressure on myself,” he said last month at the Royals Rally in Kansas City and reiterated at his locker in the spring training clubhouse last week.
It wasn’t that it was all too much for him.
It was that he sometimes wanted too much.
“I think that’s fair to say,” his father, Bobby Witt Sr., said by telephone on Sunday. “What I saw was (that) every game he wanted to do something big.”
He added, “Don’t try to go 3 for 4 before the game starts; I think that’s one of the biggest things” he had to learn.
While he learned to “just calm down” during the course of the season, he began it all-too-cognizant of the team’s five straight losing seasons and feeling this way:
“I’m like, ‘I’ve got to help, I’ve got to change the team. I’ve got to do this, do that,’” the son said. “Instead of just being Bobby Witt Jr., being myself, doing my job. I tried to do more and more.”
He did plenty, to be sure.
Witt led all rookies in extra-base hits (57), RBIs (80) and stolen bases (30) and finished second in the class in total bases (253) and hits (150). He became just the fifth player 22 or younger to generate 20 home runs and 30 stolen bases in a season. And he made a number of stunning defensive plays.
But he also struck out 135 times with just 30 walks and committed 19 errors, including 16 at shortstop — the position that the Royals now want him to play every day.
By any reasonable standard, though, it was an encouraging, at times exhilarating, debut season. Any lumps or hiccups absolutely were to be expected — especially as he adjusted into the marathon of a major-league season and dealt with a hamstring injury and shin splints and repeatedly was hit in the hand by pitches that forced him out of games.
Now, though, it’s about how that season flows into this one for Witt, who is consumed with self-improvement (he put on 5-8 pounds in the off-season and got faster) and harnessing lessons into something constructive.
One motto he’s been using for years now is: “You either win or you learn,” something I first heard him say when he was working through a few things at Double-A Northwest Arkansas in 2021.
“That’s how you play it,” he said then. “You’re never really losing, (because) you’re always gaining some type of edge over either the other team or yourself (by) just trying to get yourself better.”
In this case, that includes recognizing that he’s at his best when he’s just himself and doesn’t squeeze too hard. Or as George Brett likes to say, “Don’t try harder; try easier.”
Maybe that’s ... easier said than done. “Trying to figure out that medium point,” as Witt put it Thursday, is a challenge. And such things typically are works in progress rather than a simple flip of a switch.
Just the same, Year Two of the Witt era figures to provide some built-in advantage toward optimizing his talent and helping the Royals return to competitiveness as the most high-profile of a promising young nucleus.
And it starts with his own self-awareness and stated dedication to trust his ability and keep everything “simple” — a point he reiterates with that very word stitched onto his glove this season.
“It should be a lot easier. That transition’s kind of taken place,” said J.J. Picollo, executive vice president and general manager of the Royals. “He knows he belongs. Now we would expect him to be a little bit more relaxed — not that we didn’t feel he was. But just a little more confident in who he is and what he can do.”
Now, he added, “He can just go out and play.”
For what it’s worth this spring, so far so good.
After going 2 for 3 with a double against the Dodgers on Saturday night, Witt was hitting .438 and still error-free at the vital position the Royals’ metrics told them he was getting more comfortable with late last season.
One of those hits Saturday, the father noted, reflected an offseason point of emphasis: getting to the elevated fastball that at times confounded him in 2022. In this case, he smacked a high 97 mph pitch into right.
“That’s a difference,” Witt Sr. said. “I can see that right now.”
He can also see what seem to be the obvious benefits of his son knowing he’ll be playing shortstop regularly.
“There’s no doubt about that,” he said.
The longer he’s at shortstop regularly, Picollo reckons, the more accustomed he’ll get to the positioning, angles, reads and jumps that can make him special.
Meanwhile, the longer he’s playing overall, the more he’ll be attuned to what to hold on to and what to discard.
“He likes to appease everybody, you know?” Witt Sr. said. “And I think sometimes that can hurt him a little bit.”
While you’d never know anything ate at him from the unflappable demeanor that strikes new manager Matt Quatraro as carrying himself “far beyond his years in the game,” Witt churned inside at times in 2022.
But this is what he learned:
“You’ve got to have that routine where if you lose, you make mistakes, you make errors, all right, think about it an hour — maybe two hours — after the game,” he said. “And then once you turn off your lights and go to bed, you’ve got to flip the switch. It’s a new day.”
Now it’s a new year, which will include what should be another growth opportunity with Team USA in the World Baseball Classic before the Royals open the season against Minnesota on March 30 at Kauffman Stadium.
And between the talent, the renowned work ethic and what he’s gained with experience, his encore figures to eclipse the original.
“I think that when you look back upon it, and you look at the year that he had, I think he was happy with that,” Witt Sr. said. “But that really wasn’t the best of him. I believe, he believes, that there’s definitely more there. A lot more there.”