It's all super depressing. I mean there was 11 thousand people out to see the team on the first sunday of the spring. Apathy.
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Witt Jr. has that bad of a year last year? Shoot, must have missed that.
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MLB ROOKIES who had at least 250 ABs in OPS per baseball reference who debuted 2011 and 2022 (including this years few ABs)

1. Joey Meneses..........................911
2. Julio Rodriguez........................851
3. Michael Harris II.......................848
4. Vinnie Pasquantino...................826
5. Adley Rutschman.....................824
6. Brenden Donovan.....................781
7. Oscar Gonzalez........................780
8. Seiva Suzuki............................770
9. Steven Kwan...........................769
10. Oneil Cruz.............................766
11. Nick Fortes............................752
12. Jose Miranda.........................746
13. Jake McCarthy.......................746
14. Juan Yepez...........................742
15. Christopher Morel..................741
16. TJ Freidl...............................737
17. Nolan Gorman.......................731
18. Jeremy Pena.........................719
19. Bobby Witt Jr.........................718

And then in WAR he's 31st.
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We'll be at 29 games played at the end of April.

0-3 now, any optimistic folks want to look at that schedule and tell me where we're at 20% of the season in on May 1st?
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And will we ever be .500 or better this year?
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Jesus Christ, not a chance.
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How many innings will we play before we take our first lead of the season?

So far we’re at 27.
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:-) Good one.
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Now that is twisting what I said...I said he isn't as good as the other prospects he was ranked with, which is true.

But unfortunately even with the WS win, Hosmer and Moustakas never were as good as they were supposed to be either...
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I wish I could actually see a game in order to render an opinion, but it sounds like they have enough Intel/video on all our hitters and the young guys especially aren't adjusting at all. Salvy hitting and that's about it I'm guessing. We wasted all those picks on pitching that's not gonna pan out except for Singer.
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One thing to always remember is development is never linear.

I strongly believe if Witt can get his walk rate close to 9% like he had in Triple-A and Double-A, he's going to be in that echelon with Rodriguez and Rutchsman.

It's also important to remember the Rutschman played high-level college baseball and didn't debut until age 24. He had a lot of seasoning.

Rodriguez played in the full season minor leagues in 2019 before the pandemic.

Witt's full season pro debut was not only delayed because of the pandemic, but he did the unthinkable, getting assigned in Double-A without much pro experience. HS drafted prospects don't do that at all. There's no comp for that.
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I dont think it's even fair to compare Witt to Rutschman. Witt was drafted out of high school. Adley Rutschman went to Oregon State and led that team to a straight up national championship. Rutschman is so gifted that absolutely no professional org could have possibly screwed him up. And Witt was a flashy high schooler. He was a high upside lottery ticket. You cant compare em.
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it's strange...this team didn't add any talent and looks like last years shitty team. Why is that?
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I'd give the offense some time. Seeing the various stats on Twitter and digging around on Fangraphs, the Royals lead the entire league in hard hit ball rate. They're 4th in exit velocity. 3rd in walk rate and their BABIP is .159 which is the worst in the league by a wide margin. So they're taking walks and hitting the ball hard but they aren't turning any of those balls into hits. Strikeout rate is about middle of the pack so it's not like they're not putting balls in play.

It's just one series though so we'll see if they can hold some of those numbers. It is hilarious after 20+ years of the Royals taking flack for being stuck in the past, they hire an analytics driven staff and their first series do really well in some of those numbers and the team goes 0-3 and the offense looked as bad as it ever has. Very Royals.
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Team batted ball profiles so far. obviously not a large sample size pic.twitter.com/b06I82UuH0

— Jay Cuda (@JayCuda) April 3, 2023

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