Welcome to another installment of the deep dive series. We covered Cole Ragans last time, and now we cover the face of the franchise, Bobby Witt Jr. Heading into his first All-Star game and Home Run Derby, BWJ has risen to levels the Royals franchise hasn’t seen since George Brett. Let’s begin prepping the dive.
So far, BWJ has posted a slash line of .324/.372/.564 for an OPS of .936. That is really good even compared to last year. His OPS is up over 100 points compared to last season and he has already matched his fWAR total from last season. Things could get scary quick is BWJ keeps improving at this rate, because he isn’t outright terrible at anything.
The idea of a 5-tool player comes to the forefront with many baseball fans when it comes to high-tiered prospects. Most of them don’t pan out, but BWJ is the pinnacle of 5-tool players. His hit tool has shown up this year with his .324 average and 119 hits, and the power is there with 15 bombs, 25 2B’s, and 9 3B’s. The speed is there with 22 SBs and the 100th percentile sprint speed, and his defense and arm are top-tier in the league. Oh, and he is doing this at the age of 24.
The craziest part of BWJ’s game is the constant drive for improvement and that is shown in the numbers. 2023 was a building block year for BWJ as he figured out how to make adjustments at the plate. He was a good hitter in 2023, but 2024 BWJ is another beast. The only things that got “worse” or lowered in percentile, per Baseball Savant, are his whiff% and chase%. Even then that is a great tradeoff for everything else being at least above league average.
Usually, with deep dives I talk about weaknesses with a player’s game; however, with BWJ all he needs to do is walk slightly more. He is already barreling the ball with the best of them, the fastest runner in the league, one of, if not the best defensive shortstops in the MLB, and he still has room to grow.
With that, let’s discuss his splits a little bit. Most of them are great, such as his OPS with men on base or in scoring position being 1.000 or above, but he follows the trend many other Royals players follow. That is he is worse away from Kauffman. Now, he isn’t terrible away from Kauffman, but a wRC+ difference of 93 between playing at Kauffman versus anywhere else is weird. Outside of that split though, there isn’t anything that stands out as bad.
If we look at monthly splits he is consistent. BWJ hasn’t had a wRC+ below 130 in a month and even has a wRC+ of 304 in six July games. One key to BWJ’s improvement lies in his plate discipline numbers. As the years go by he is making more and more contact and making better swing decisions. That combined with his batted ball profile leads to seasons like this one. He still chases a little bit too much and whiffs about 22.7% of the time.
Speaking of batted ball profile, let’s discuss that. BWJ has always had an even distribution of grounders, line drives, and flyballs and that hasn’t changed. What has changed is he is hitting balls up the middle more often at a 42.2% rate. Tie that with his 15% barrel rate and those are the only major changes in his batted ball profile.
We got one more metric for his hitting, the pitch tracking numbers. Last year, BWJ struggled with breaking balls hitting .212 and for a while, he struggled hitting fastballs. This year, however, he isn’t struggling with any pitch. On all pitches – fastballs, breaking, and offspeed offerings – he is hitting over .300 and has a slugging rate over .500. There isn’t a pitch that is causing him issues either.
So, the hitting for BWJ is great and his speed is top-notch. We haven’t discussed his defense, but it is also top-notch. In the Majors, he is top five in defensive runs saved with five on the year, and top ten in UZR at shortstop. In terms of outs above average, he is second in the Majors as a whole with 13, one behind Marcus Semien. So yeah, BWJ is still an elite defender.
That about does it for this deep dive. With him staying with the Royals potentially till 2034, expect BWJ to win a lot of accolades with the Royals. The Royals haven’t had a talent like this since George Brett, and this writer expects BWJ to win an MVP with the Royals. Let’s not take the talents of BWJ for granted and enjoy the ride.
Photo credit: Ed Zurga, Getty Images
[…] first half of 2024 is by far the best for a Royals shortstop ever. BWJ was the subject of our deep dive series as well and it explains a lot of why he will bring another MVP to the Royals. He is […]
[…] Salvy left last night’s game with a cramp, writes Anne Rogers. […]