Through June of this year, Bobby Witt Jr. had been a productive big league player but nothing like the generationally talented franchise cornerstone that he had been billed as since the Royals drafted him in 2019.
But since the calendar turned to July, the sea parted and Major League Baseball has witnessed the ceiling of the talented young shortstop. Witt has decisively been the best position player in baseball over his last 40 games, where he has hit .345/.379/.673 with 12 home runs. And he’s not doing it through some lucky bounces or by sacrificing a part of his game; as Hunter Samuels pointed out on Twitter, Witt has increased his power ouptut while simultaneously lowering his strikeout rate.