Bobby Witt Jr. is one of the best players in the entirety of Major League Baseball. There are a few other players who can hit for a better average or walk more or steal more bases or have more power or who strike out less. But Witt is elite in all aspects in a way that probably no other player is, and he’s well on his way to a Hall of Fame career.
Witt also plays baseball for the Kansas City Royals. This, unequivocally, rules. Witt is excellent and astounding and so much fun to watch.
Now, Royals fans aren’t used to seeing players like this play for the team; a persistent lack of high-end talent is part of why the franchise has had so few winning seasons over the last three decades. Heck, the Royals have also had precious few of what fans and writers sometimes call “The Hall of Very Good” type players–these are the Alex Gordon types, the Salvador Perez types. We have seen those! Just not very many.
All of this is to say that there is an interesting situation going on right now. Last year, Witt was American League Most Valuable Player runner-up with a killer season. He hit 32 home runs and stole 31 bases, he hit .332, he won a Gold Glove, he accrued a hilarious 10.5 Wins Above Replacement per Fangraphs. This year, his bat has regressed significantly, and while Witt is still great, it is not hyperbole to say that the Royals need more out of him than what he is producing.
To put it another way: last year’s Royals team would not have made the playoffs if Witt wasn’t baseball Superman. It is looking like this year’s Royals team will not make the playoffs because, in no small part, Witt isn’t baseball Superman.
But asking Witt to turn in MVP-caliber seasons is an impossible demand. It is not sustainable for “making it to the playoffs” hinge on a player like Witt being an MVP versus simply being a league-leading All-Star.
The crazy thing is that Witt isn’t even underperforming; this season is a totally normal season for a great hitter to have. I took a look at the last six years of position players who were voted into the Hall of Fame (Ichiro Suzuki notwithstanding because he is a crazy outlier here) and looked at their wRC+ by season. Standing for “weighted runs created plus,” wRC+ shows a hitter’s overall contributions at the plate weighted to the offensive run environment of that season, and displays it where 100 is league average and one point above or below 100 is one percentage point better or worse than league average.
I wanted to get a snapshot of each player’s core career, so I lopped off their rookie and final seasons from my data set. I also only included seasons where they played at least half the season (81 games); I didn’t want to factor in significant injuries. And with all this in mind, it turns out that even the best of the best have peak seasons that are significantly above their average offensive contribution:
Recent HoF hitters peak seasonsNamePeak wRC+Non-Peak Average wRC+DifferenceJoe Mauer17011951Adrian Beltre16111348David Ortiz17513441Larry Walker17713740Scott Rolen15912237Derek Jeter15612036Todd Helton16613135Edgar Martinez18215032AVERAGE16812840
These Hall of Famers had monster peak seasons. Some of them had a few peak seasons of similar scope. But their average healthy season was much, much lower–between 30 and 50 points of wRC+ lower. I know this isn’t a definitive statistical study. Rather, it is an illustrative moment: even the best of the best recent players have a peak season or seasons that are a step above what they
Witt’s calling card is not that he’s one of the best hitters in the league, because he is not. Witt’s calling card is that he’s a great hitter and a great baserunner and a great fielder, and that basically no one else in baseball is so to the same degree. To expect Witt to be one of the best hitters in the league is a fool’s errand and putting Witt into an impossible position.
If I were to guess, I would wager that Witt never reaches a 169 wRC+ again like he did last year. I’d say he comfortably fits into the 125-140 wRC+ basis with some fluctuation. That, with Witt’s baserunning and defense, puts him squarely on a Hall of Fame track.
But it also means that the Royals absolutely must surround him with help. And Witt needs a lot of help–the Royals need, conservatively, three brand position player starters next year if they want to make the playoffs.
At the end of the day, I think it is completely fair to point out that Witt has been way worse at the plate this year, because he has. It is also fair to say that the fallout of Witt being 47 points in wRC+ worse is the single largest reason that the Royals don’t have a winning record, because it is. But it is unfair to put the blame on Witt here: if the Royals were built to weather some perfectly normal variance in the play of their future Hall of Fame shortstop, we wouldn’t be talking about this at all. They aren’t, so we are.