Around Bobby Witt Jr., Royals build a new culture and enter MLB’s modern era
By Rustin Dodd and Zack Meisel
Jun 13, 2024
One day last October, Kansas City Royals general manager J.J. Picollo cued up a PowerPoint presentation inside the team’s facility in Surprise, Ariz. It was just five days after his team finished the regular season with a franchise-record 106 losses. But Picollo was already thinking about 2024. He clicked through slides with headings like vision, mission, purpose and stopped on another titled “Our identity.”
His message was clear: Who were the Kansas City Royals now?
Under former general manager Dayton Moore, Picollo’s longtime boss and mentor, employees often bragged about the organization’s mom-and-pop feel. The front office was filled with old scouts who cut their teeth with the Atlanta Braves in the ’90s and 2000s, believing in the tenets of player development and culture, and they rode the ethos to the franchise’s first playoff appearance in 29 years, an appearance in the 2014 World Series and the 2015 World Series title.
But by the end of 2023, the old recipe had grown stale. The Royals were mired in a sixth straight losing season; their player development methods were years behind industry leaders; owner John Sherman opted to shake things up. He fired Moore, elevated Picollo, and offered a public mandate to be more data-driven.
Picollo spent the next year trying to retain the old vibes while embracing what he called “a diversity of thought.” He hired manager Matt Quatraro from the Tampa Bay Rays, plucked pitching coach Brian Sweeney from the Cleveland Guardians, and turbo-charged the club’s analytics department. Long enamored with the player development systems of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the gold standard in the industry, he set forth trying to modernize a front office known for its continuity.
The changes had unleashed a wave of creative energy — a cascade of disruption and growth. Yet one day last June, Picollo realized he’d missed something along the way: “We weren’t necessarily on the same page,” he says now.
So as the organization gathered in Arizona, Picollo started with his PowerPoint. The meetings would be a reset, a summit that would be equal parts brainstorming and therapy session, a chance to put everyone in the same room, let go of the past, and define what the Royals would be moving forward.
“It was an understanding that we needed to make some changes in how we thought about things,” Picollo said. “But the only way we were gonna be able to do that is we needed some people to open our eyes to it.”
As anyone in the business world can attest, sometimes meetings are just meetings. But sometimes they are also the catalyst for an offseason that transforms a baseball team into the biggest surprise in years. Buoyed by an overhauled pitching staff, the rejuvenation of catcher Salvador Perez, and the superstar ascension of shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., the Royals — the Royals! — are 39-30 and on track to match the greatest single-season turnaround of all time.
It’s not just that the 2023 Royals did not win their 39th game until Aug. 14. Or that the 2024 Royals are on pace to smash the record for most wins following a 100-loss season (87, shared by the ‘89 Orioles and ‘67 Cubs). Even after losing four straight this week, if the 2024 Royals continue their current pace, they would win 92 games — 36 more than last year — matching the 1903 New York Giants for the biggest year-over-year gain in history.
If that all sounds like some kind of fever dream, it is one that has materialized very, very fast. One day last month, Picollo was watching the Royals postgame show after a victory in Minnesota when he realized it was his team’s 35th of the year.
“Shit,” Picollo thought, “we get 21 more wins and we’ll equal last year’s total.”
It was May 29.
It’s possible that no franchise has had a stranger 30-year stretch than the Royals. Since 1995, the club has had 24 losing seasons, seven different 100-loss campaigns, and a World Series title. Since 2004, it has had four different seasons of at least 104 losses and more World Series appearances than the Yankees. What other club has ever boasted more AL Pennants (2) than 90-win seasons (1) across three decades?
When the Royals drafted Witt second overall in 2019, they were fully immersed in another dormant period, hurtling past 100 losses for a second straight year, their World Series squad scattered across baseball, their farm system dried up, and their ownership situation in flux. (Sherman agreed to buy the team from long-time owner David Glass that summer). When Witt debuted as a 21-year-old rookie in 2022, things weren’t much better. The Royals lost 97 games, Sherman sacked Moore, contention still seemed lightyears away.
It was in that context that Sherman and Picollo asked Witt and his father/agent Bobby Witt Sr. to sit down for a conversation last September. Witt was finishing a breakout year in which he hit 30 homers and stole 59 bases. With a potential superstar under control for just four more years, Sherman and Picollo wanted to discuss a long-term contract extension. But first, they wanted to know what Witt valued.
“If we didn’t feel like we were gonna be able to extend him, you probably got to trade him,” Picollo said. “We didn’t want to be faced with that.”
More than dollar guarantees or years, what Witt wanted most was an assurance that they could build a winner around him. The conversation gave Picollo a road map: Before they could escalate the negotiations, they would need to convince Witt that they were serious. So the Royals made their first offer to Witt’s representatives at the winter meetings in early December. Then they went to work, signing veteran relievers Will Smith and Chris Stratton, adding starting pitcher Seth Lugo and engaging the Miami Marlins in trade discussions for one of their young starters. When the Marlins asked for first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino, Sherman greenlit a budget increase to sign veteran starter Michael Wacha. (“It was a five-minute conversation,” Picollo said.) As it happened, Picollo received the first counter-proposal from Witt’s reps during the week before Christmas, just as the ink was drying on the free-agent spending spree. It felt like an early gift.
“I felt like: OK … we got something here,” Picollo recalled. “The counter-offer was an indication that Bobby was willing to stay in Kansas City. Ohtani had just signed his deal. If they didn’t want to stay in Kansas City, they could have just said: ‘We want $600 million.’ They didn’t do that.”
It took another six weeks to get the contract across the finish line. But as the Royals kept talking to free agents, they kept hearing the same request: Tell me more about Bobby Witt. Validated by the words, they sweetened the proposal again, offering a guarantee of $288 million across 11 years and including a series of opt-outs starting after the 2030 season. The offer was more than $200 million more than the largest contract in team history, which was an extension to Perez, the former World Series MVP, in 2021. Sherman was convinced it was right.
“We all have valuation metrics and analytics,” Sherman would say. “But these deals are about people.”
On the first Saturday in February, Picollo was sitting in his office at Kauffman Stadium when he received the good news from Scott Pucino, Witt’s other agent at Octagon. As fate would have it, Witt was already in the building, mingling with fans downstairs during the annual “Royals Rally ” event at Kauffman Stadium. To Witt, the Royals’ offseason offered more than generational wealth or security.
It was, in his words, “a sign of hope.”
When Michael Wacha was considering where to play this season, he decided to do a little extra research on the Royals. The dollars and years made sense, but Wacha, a 32-year-old starter, also wanted to win. So he zeroed in on the months of August and September from last year, when the Royals finished a respectable 26-31. That offered a little optimism, he thought. But he also locked onto two names: Bobby Witt Jr. and Salvador Perez.
“You’ve got one of the best players in the game, and one of the best catchers in the game behind the plate,” Wacha said last week, standing in the corner of the clubhouse he shares with Witt.
There is a list of reasons why the Royals would make the playoffs if the season ended today: The $100 million free agent class signed to reassure Witt has lengthened the rotation and offered depth to the lineup. Lugo, a former Mets reliever, has been one of the best starters in the American League. Cole Ragans, acquired last summer for a couple months from Aroldis Chapman, is one of the most talented young lefties in the game. Sweeney, the pitching coach, has the entire staff throwing more strikes and creating more weapons.
“You learn a lot when you get kicked in the teeth,” Sweeney said.
The lineup, meanwhile, has received a spark from third baseman Maikel Garcia, the younger cousin of both former Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar and Braves star Ronald Acuña Jr. Garcia, 24, has been worth 1.5 WAR while displaying a chip on the shoulder best summed by the words tattooed across each of his calves: “MOST HATED.”
Yet the turnaround begins with two players — Witt and Perez — the bookend stars in the process of a baton exchange from one generation to the next. Perez, 34, arrived in Kansas City as a baby-faced 21-year-old in 2011, a precocious catcher who came of age alongside the eventual 2015 World Series champions and became team captain. He is still, through sheer force of will and preparation, playing at an All-Star level into his mid-30s. So it was no small thing to those inside the organization when Perez, in the final days of last season, declared Witt as the best player he’d ever played with.
“Seriously,” Perez told MLB.com in September. “He is the best I have ever seen here.”
The support of Perez has allowed Witt to be himself, which is often a Mike Trout-ian blend of big production and bland wholesomeness. Witt does not like to talk about himself. He doesn’t like to hit home runs in batting practice. He is so fastidious about his mechanics that he often returns to the dugout and immediately asks hitting coach Alec Zumwalt to watch the video and cross-check some minute detail.
“He can sometimes make adjustments quicker than anybody I’ve ever seen,” Zumwalt said.
He also keeps improving. Witt entered Monday ranked second in the majors in batting average (.320), eighth in OPS (.927), and third in WAR (4.0) behind Aaron Judge and Gunnar Henderson. He also rates as the fastest player in baseball, which can make suitable comparisons hard to find.
“He’s Bobby Witt Jr.,” Zumwalt said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of people trying to compare future players to him. That’s how good he is.”
On the field, Witt is a generational talent. What he is not is a voluble talker, so when the Royals started stacking wins in April, and reporters kept asking Witt to explain the performance, he kept repeating the same line: “The boys are playing some ball.”
It was a line that was at once literally true and quite limited in its descriptiveness, and perhaps it spoke to a larger truth about Witt and his teammates. Because Witt is an MVP candidate, the line started appearing on social media and on T-shirts and morphed into an unofficial rallying cry, complete with its own awkward acronym: “TBAPSB”. But as far as the 2024 Royals are concerned, it’s about as much schtick as you will find. Last year, the club utilized a Gladiator helmet as a home run celebration. This year, the helmet is gone.
Or consider this scene from last week in Cleveland: As the Royals prepped for batting practice before a game against the Guardians, the Cleveland grounds crew wheeled the batting cage off the field. Word hadn’t yet spread that the game was going to be postponed because of thunderstorms. So Witt took it upon himself, jogging across the infield to confront the head groundskeeper. For a moment, Witt pleaded with him to return the equipment so the Royals could prepare as planned.
There was no need, of course. But Witt really wanted to play some ball.
Among the only requests Matt Quatraro made when he became Royals manager in 2023: He asked Picollo if he could have a statistical analyst dedicated to the major league club and present in the clubhouse on all road trips. The Royals had never had a position like it, so for the first year the role often fell to Daniel Mack, the team’s head of research and development, who spent the season trying to figure out what kind of personality would best fit the role.
This year, they made a full-time hire: Pete Berryman, a former Auburn football player turned software analyst.
Berryman is there to research and answer any questions Quatraro or the staff might have. Quatraro often has a lot.
When Picollo hired Quatraro from the Rays, he did so because he believed in Quataro’s tactical acumen and his even-keel, no-frills style. But he also hoped Quatraro would push how the Royals operated. In other words: Picollo wanted to hire the kind of people who were comfortable asking questions.
The Royals have increased their analytics department to a staff of around 20 people. They hired assistant pitching coach Zach Bove from the Minnesota Twins to aid in pitching strategy. But more than the extra data, what has fascinated Picollo most is trying to find the perfect harmony between old and new. When Picollo worked in player development, he often found himself watching the Dodgers prospect teams play during instructional league in Arizona. The Dodgers had a knack for turning later-round picks into top prospects, which piqued his interest. But what really whetted his curiosity was when the Dodgers front office — considered among the most analytics-forward — hired a former Royals pitcher who was much more of a hardened baseball traditionalist than statistically fluent.
“It was an interesting mix,” he said.
The story colored his thinking when he became the general manager. The way he saw it, the answer was not in changing the Royals’ foundation. It was diversifying it.
“I think what has happened is there’s just more balance in our thought,” Picollo said.
Perhaps nobody embodies the change in organizational thought more than Quatraro, who on a morning in Cleveland last week was wearing a blue T-shirt with one word: TODAY. No logo or artwork. No alluring font. Just five letters that embody the only thing the Royals manager cares about.
Before joining the Royals, Quatraro had been on a major-league staff for nine years, including two stretches with the Rays and one in Cleveland. He had never experienced a losing season. In that sense, his first season with the Royals presented a measure of inner torture. But none of his players could tell. “A first-year manager?” said longtime Royals reliever Scott Barlow, now in his first season in Cleveland. “I would’ve never known that.”
When spring training began in February, there was almost zero discussion of last year. (When a visiting reporter noted the ‘23 Royals started 28-73, Quatraro said: “Is that what we were?”) The day-to-day attitude has permeated the clubhouse.
Last Friday night at Kauffman Stadium, on the day after a come-from-behind win in Cleveland, the Royals trailed the Seattle Mariners 8-0 in the top of the fourth inning. Last year, it would have been another loss in 106 of them. But this time, the Royals started chipping into the lead. MJ Melendez hit a three-run homer in the fourth. They scored another three runs in the sixth. When they came to bat in the bottom of the ninth, they trailed 9-7.
Second baseman Nick Loftin walked. Utility man Garrett Hampson reached on a dribbler to third base. The signature moment came when Witt pulled a ball into the left-field corner and legged out a game-tying triple. Kauffman Stadium rocked like it hadn’t in years.
In the moments after a 10-9 victory, Quatraro sat in an interview room on the first floor of Kauffman Stadium and recalled a random day from spring training, when one of his players had uttered a line that stuck with him.
“The bigger you’re down,” Quatraro said, “the better the story is when you come back.”
