{"id":2419331,"date":"2026-05-16T09:55:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T09:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2419331"},"modified":"2026-05-16T09:55:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T09:55:24","slug":"royals-bobby-witt-jr-becomes-first-mlb-player-to-reach-3-0-war-delivers-game-tying-hit-in-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/royals-bobby-witt-jr-becomes-first-mlb-player-to-reach-3-0-war-delivers-game-tying-hit-in-defeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals&#8217; Bobby Witt Jr. becomes first MLB player to reach 3.0 WAR, delivers game-tying hit in defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/kansas-city-royals\">Kansas City Royals<\/a> shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. continues proving to be one of MLB&#8217;s top talents.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Entering Friday&#8217;s game against the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/st-louis-cardinals\">St. Louis Cardinals<\/a> at Busch Stadium, Witt was the <a target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BaseballWRLD_\/status\/2055293816521793897?s=20\">lone player to register a 3.0 WAR rating<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>With the game tied in the top of the 10th inning, Witt delivered a first-pitch double to left-center field off reliever Ryan Stanek, scoring baserunner Maikel with the short-lived lead.<\/p>\n<p>Witt can&#8217;t do everything.<\/p>\n<h2>Royals&#8217; Bobby Witt Jr. pacing MLB in rising WAR rating<\/h2>\n<p>Despite the Royals struggling this season, Witt continues to provide the batting order with something the players collectively lack: consistent offense. The 25-year-old speedster, who executed an inside-the-park home run in\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/kansas-city-royals\/news\/royals-bobby-witt-jr-tigers-14-second-inside-park-hr\/0329d5a8d5dfe33460043be6\">14.13 seconds<\/a>\u00a0earlier this season, should be considered an AL MVP candidate.<\/p>\n<p>In his opening 173 at-bats this season, Witt slashed .306\/.381\/.503. He paced the Royals in batting average (.306), home runs (seven) and RBI (22).<\/p>\n<p>Along with his league-high WAR ranking, Statcast rated Witt with a <a target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/baseballsavant.mlb.com\/savant-player\/bobby-witt-jr-677951?stats=splits-r-hitting-mlb&amp;season=2026\">batting run value of nine<\/a>, placing the 25-year-old five-tool star in the 90th percentile.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Witt, however, has yet to figure out how to compensate for an injury-riddled pitching starting rotation and a struggling bullpen. The Royals ranked No. 22 in team earned-run average (4.43).<\/p>\n<p>After Witt lifted the Royals to an extra-inning lead, Cardinals&#8217; Alec Burleson connected on a first-pitch game-tying single in the bottom of the frame. It was their first hit in nine chances with runners in scoring position Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Cardinals ended up earning a <a target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/mlb\/kansas-city-royals-st-louis-cardinals-460515124\/\">5-4 win<\/a> in the 11th inning, preventing Witt from getting another at-bat to increase his WAR rating further.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.sportingnews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. continues proving to be one of MLB&#8217;s top talents.\u00a0 Entering Friday&#8217;s game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium, Witt was the lone player to register a 3.0 WAR rating. With the game tied in the top of the 10th inning, Witt delivered a first-pitch double to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2419332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2419331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Royals-Bobby-Witt-Jr-becomes-first-MLB-player-to-reach.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419331","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=2419331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2419333,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419331\/revisions\/2419333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2419332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2419331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2419331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2419331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}