Bobby Witt Jr.<\/strong>, the Royals’ superstar who finished second to Judge in the 2024 MVP voting. While Witt hasn’t had the start he usually does — he’s slashing .254\/.346\/.299 with an OPS of .645 across 18 games — it’s only a matter of time until the talented infielder gets it going.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
Witt has played 11 games in the Bronx. In that span, he’s hitting .255 with two doubles and one home run.<\/p>\n
Predictions<\/u><\/h2>\nWho will the MVP of the series be?<\/h3>\n
Ben Rice<\/strong><\/p>\nRice plays all three games and shows why he needs to stay in the lineup.<\/p>\n
Which Yankees pitcher will have the best start?<\/h3>\n
Cam Schlittler<\/strong><\/p>\nSchlittler has allowed three runs in back-to-back games this season. He didn’t do that all of last season, and I don’t see that going to three games.<\/p>\n
Which Royals player will be a thorn in the Yankees’ side?<\/h3>\n
Bobby Witt Jr.<\/strong><\/p>\nEasy pick. Witt just put up three hits on Thursday against the Tigers, and it feels like he’s ready to be his MVP-type self after a slow start.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here are five things to watch and predictions as the Yankees\u00a0open a three-game series against the Kansas City Royals in the Bronx on Friday… 5 things to watch Will Ben Rice stay in the lineup? A lot has been made of manager Aaron Boone‘s lineups this week. Despite saying Rice is his first baseman, he’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2377586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[462833,350142,436918,354979,377375,319690,376892,462835,311239,353618,360866,314825,386019,346980,462834,361692,22091,356637,313160],"class_list":["post-2377584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-aaron-boone","tag-aaron-judge","tag-angel-chivilli","tag-angels","tag-ben-rice","tag-bobby-witt","tag-cam-schlittler","tag-camilo-doval","tag-cole-ragans","tag-giancarlo-stanton","tag-mike-trout","tag-noah-cameron","tag-paul-goldschmidt","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-ryan-weathers","tag-the-angels","tag-the-royals","tag-will-warren","tag-yankees"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Yankees-vs-Royals-5-things-to-watch-and-series-predictions.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2377584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2377587,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377584\/revisions\/2377587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2377586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2377584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2377584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2377584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}