We have to get Witt back to the playoffs

A great player deserves a stage

A young superstar, not yet 25 years old, stands watching the opposing team celebrate an American League Divisional Series win at Kauffman Stadium. This superstar is a five-tool player who just assembled one of the best seasons in recent memory—accruing more than 10 Wins Above Replacement, per Fangraphs’ version of the stat. He didn’t do very well in the ALDS, though, and that’s part of why his team is watching the opponents celebrate. Surely he’d be back.

The year is 2014, and that player is Mike Trout.

Ten years on, Trout still hasn’t made it back to the playoffs. In fact, Trout only experienced one additional winning season. In the city of angels, he’s been in sports hell, one that gets worse for him as he struggles through more and more injuries.

But you could be forgiven for thinking that I was writing about Bobby Witt Jr., who in his age-24 season put up 10.4 WAR and was the tip of the spear for a team that arguably made the biggest year-to-year leap in MLB history. Witt watched the New York Yankees celebrate on his field long after the rest of his teammates went back to the clubhouse. After the game, he was disappointed that the Royals didn’t advance and confident that this was the dawn of a new era, one that would see consistent postseason berths.

“It’s kind of something that will light a torch in you and leave you a bad taste for the future,” Witt said. “Because now for Kansas City Royals baseball, this is what we want. This is what we’re gonna do every year. We’re gonna get in the postseason. Now it’s how far we’re gonna go.

“It’s not how we’re gonna get there. It’s how far we’re gonna go. That’s what we’re gonna work for and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Unfortunately for Witt, it isn’t up to him. It wasn’t just up to Trout, either, the best player of his generation. From 2012 through 2019, Trout accumulated over 70 WAR. Nobody else during that stretch even had 50. But since baseball is so different from the other team sports, there’s only so much a given player can do. Trout couldn’t stop the Angels from bleeding runs. Hell, two superstars couldn’t do it, as Trout and teammate Shohei Ohtani combined for 15.2 WAR together in 2022 and all they got out of it was 89 losses and an all-time sports Tweet.

For that reason, despite playing in the second-largest market in the United States, Trout hasn’t ascended to the level of stardom that he deserved. This is America, and if you don’t win in the playoffs, an army of overpaid pundits on ESPN and Fox Sports will excoriate you on live television and in TikTok clips.

The Los Angeles Angeles sure spent a bunch of money trying to get Trout back. Albert Pujols, Anthony Rendon, Zack Cozart, Justin Upton, Josh Hamilton—all of them way underperformed their contracts. The problem was more fundamental, that of poor ownership on Arte Moreno’s part and a flurry of bad trades and organization building by a litany of baseball ops professionals.

All of this is to say one thing: we have to get Witt back to the playoffs, because it’s not guaranteed and he can’t do it on his own. The Royals have had good players, very good players, since George Brett retired—from Alex Gordon and Salvador Perez to Mike Sweeney, Zack Greinke, and Carlos Beltran. None of them are as talented or as well-positioned to put together a Hall of Fame career like Witt.

The good news is that ownership is committed to doing so, and the front office has done a stellar job of making the right baseball decisions. The bad news is that none of it matters if the Royals can’t produce in-house talent from their farm system, which is the one thing we haven’t seen happen. What killed the 2014-2015 runs was that the initial burst of talent was the only one, as players like Bubba Starling, Hunter Dozier, Kyle Zimmer, and Christian Colon failed to reach their potential.

To be clear, it’s important to get all the Royals back to the playoffs, not just Witt. However, with respect to the other players on the Royals roster, they don’t have the stakes that Witt’s career does. Witt could be one of the faces of baseball and one of America’s premier athletes. Or, he could be a great player toiling away in Kansas City before he exerts the player option in his contract in a few years to find greener pastures in New York or Chicago or L.A.

So let’s get Bob back to the playoffs. He deserves it.