Why this one pitch — on which Bobby Witt Jr. homered — is a reminder of his ascension

It clicked for Bobby Witt Jr. at some point last season, and while you’ll find various accounts of when that turning point really came, there’s a pretty good case to be made for July 28.

Let’s start there. Witt drove in six runs that night, but this is about the final four — a walk-off grand slam .

You remember it, right? He mixed an exclamation point into a year defined by its question marks, and Witt, for three months the latter, took off afterward. His OPS jumped from .727 before the blast to .967 afterward, and Fangraphs rated him as the American League’s best player over the final two months of the season.

But it wasn’t just the impact of the home run.

It was how it arrived.

The Twins had their closer on the mound, Jhoan Durán, and he threw a fastball 102 miles per hour inside and off the plate. Witt still managed to turn on it. Swatted at it as effortlessly as swatting a fly.

Gone.

Things are a bit different now, and that’s applicable to the team and player. The Royals are not barging toward the franchise’s worst season in history but rather marching toward a playoff race at the onset of the second half of the season. The player has replaced doubt with two MLB All-Star Game bags at his locker, along with the accompanying red, white and blue All-Star glove. He’s a national name now, his prominence swelling after finishing as the runner-up in Monday’s Home Run Derby .

A lot’s changed.

Oh, but also? A lot stays the same.

First inning Friday. His first plate appearance since he fell just one home run — or just a few feet — shy of putting himself in a position to win that Derby on Monday.

Inside pitch, barely on the plate. A 95-mile-per-hour fastball. Witt turned it on it. Still so effortless.

Gone .

“He’s just a freak talent,” teammate Michael Massey said. “But he works on that in the cage, and it shows up in the game.”

It showed up in a 7-1 Royals win against the White Sox , who endured their own putrid season a year ago but still finished five games ahead of the Royals.

Kansas City is 26 1/2 games better than the White Sox in 2024, with more than two months left in the season. While the front office ought to be credited with the roster renovation in the offseason, no one is more responsible than the shortstop who was here a year ago — the one who endured so many losses that he formulated a blueprint for how to manage it. Actually, that very detailed aspect — the mental approach to just about every minute of his day — is as responsible for what we’re seeing today.

A star.

That’s the beauty of the timing of his Friday night blast to left field. The world saw the talent of Bobby Witt Jr. during the Home Run Derby in Arlington, Texas.

The next time he swung a bat, some 26,000 in Kansas City saw what they’ve witnessed for more than a year now. This is who he’s become, the consistent picture of a historic one-season turnaround and the picture of a franchise for the next decade.

OK, to backtrack a bit, it actually wasn’t exactly the next time he picked up a bat. Witt took some swings in the cage Friday before the game, and as much as that’s part of his routine, it perhaps wasn’t quite as routine to some interested observers.

The Derby has a way of tinkering with players’ swings, or at least the adage goes, even as Witt insisted, “I took my normal swing during the Derby.”

He might have attempted his normal swing, but he didn’t exactly see his normal pitches. They came in high, and they came in outside, so regularly that I actually researched to make sure it wasn’t some sort of mysterious hot zone. (It wasn’t. Witt is 0-for-3 on outside and high pitches this year.)

Maybe Witt should’ve picked Chris Flexen as his pitcher. To be fair, the White Sox right-hander began with a pitch outside. Catcher Korey Lee, perhaps not ironically, moved his glove for a high target. The pitch was low. Witt took it.

He did not take the fourth. Flexen served a fastball on the black on the inner half.

A fine spot if you can get it there against some. But Witt? He’s slugging .735 on the pitch.

“It’s like he cuts it off — beats it to the spot (and) keeps the barrel in the zone,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “When he’s going really good, he does that well. When he’s not, you’ll see him kind of block that ball more to the middle of the field. But when he’s turning on fastballs in, that’s a good sign.”

It was once a really good sign, some 357 days earlier, even if we didn’t know it yet.

We do know. The world does now.

The home run Friday left his bat at 104 miles per hour.

It was his softest contact of the night.

Witt laced singles at 109.6 and 107.9 miles per hour. He’s now hit the ball 95-plus on 162 occasions this season, third most in the majors behind Vladimir Guerrero (171) and Shohei Ohtani (168). That’s good company.

For them, too.