{"id":621495,"date":"2026-03-13T08:58:52","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T08:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/621495\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T08:58:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T08:58:52","slug":"hopefully-bobby-witt-jr-discovers-a-joy-of-leadoff-hitting-from-the-wbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/621495\/","title":{"rendered":"Hopefully Bobby Witt Jr. discovers a joy of leadoff hitting from the WBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arguably the most consistent debate in Kansas City sports over the last two years is about who should be the Kansas City Royals\u2019 leadoff hitter. After shuffling around multiple guys in the spot in 2024, the Royals went out and acquired Jonathan India last season to explicitly fill the job. That didn\u2019t quite work, and so now Matt Quatraro is mulling over five different players<\/a> to be the team\u2019s main leadoff guy.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, in addition to being the most consistent debate in Kansas City sports, this particular conversation is also, I think, the stupidest. There is one and only one answer to who the Royals\u2019 leadoff hitter should be, and that person is Bobby Witt Jr.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to go into extreme detail here, but let\u2019s cover why this is the case. Most importantly, the first hitter in the lineup sees the most plate appearances; over the course of a full year, a team\u2019s leadoff spot in the lineup sees about 760 plate appearances<\/a> with each subsequent spot seeing about 18 fewer PAs. Secondarily, the first hitter in the lineup is the only hitter you can guarantee a clean base with no one in front of them.<\/p>\n

As a result, there are three schools of thought with leadoff hitters. One is that your leadoff hitter should be the guy with the best on base percentage on your team because he gets a chance to get on base before anybody else; let\u2019s call this the Alex Gordon School. Two is that your leadoff hitter should be fast to take advantage of open bases; let\u2019s call this the Rickey Henderson School. Three is that your leadoff hitter should simply be your best hitter; let\u2019s call this the Shohei Ohtani School.<\/p>\n

The reason why Witt should lead off for the Royals is because it literally doesn\u2019t matter what school of thought you ascribe to. Who\u2019s got the best OBP ability on the team? Bob, no question. Who is the fastest player on the team? Bob, again. Who\u2019s the most talented overall hitter on the team? Bob, by a rather huge margin.<\/p>\n

Historically, Witt has hit second, which is the second-best place for him. Hitting second makes it so that he always has a chance of coming to the plate with someone on base. But Kansas City\u2019s problem is that Witt is so much better than anyone else on the team that it just doesn\u2019t make sense for him to lose out on those 18 plate appearances along with the other elite table-setting benefits that Witt provides. Remember: Witt does hit home runs, but he\u2019s a doubles machine who leads all of Major League Baseball over the last two seasons.<\/p>\n

All of this has sort of made it frustrating to see JJ Picollo and Matt Quatraro waffle on who should be the leadoff hitter between Witt and literally any other inferior option. So far, I\u2019ve chalked it up to Bob simply not wanting to hit leadoff. Baseball players are a superstitious bunch, and Lord knows that Witt has earned enough leeway to say that he prefers hitting second and stick to it.<\/p>\n

But something rumbles, y\u2019all. During the World Baseball Classic, Witt has been leading off.<\/p>\n

Witt as Team USA\u2019s leadoff hitter is significantly more up for debate considering the hilarious offensive firepower he\u2019s paired with. If he didn\u2019t want to hit leadoff, he wouldn\u2019t have to. I mean, what are we gonna do, complain about Aaron freaking Judge hitting at the top spot of the lineup otherwise?<\/p>\n

But Witt is indeed hitting leadoff. And it\u2019s going well; he\u2019s contributed on offense and on defense for Team USA.<\/p>\n

So my hope, my prayer, is that Witt realizes his love of hitting leadoff for Team USA and brings that love of leadoff to Kansas City. Then, we might close this debate for good as long as Witt may reign with the Royals. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arguably the most consistent debate in Kansas City sports over the last two years is about who should…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,936,2123,55,77357,2596,2595,4,252,39420],"class_list":{"0":"post-621495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-kansas","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kansas-city-royals","12":"tag-kansas-city-royals-analysis","13":"tag-kansascity","14":"tag-kansascityroyals","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-royals","17":"tag-royals-editorials-reactions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116221046047064828","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}