Tatis down with a no contact injury. The game of baseball is much better with Tatis Jr. playing.

Whit's definitely high up in the convo. I'll get flack for this but my vote would probably be Mike Sweeney. People forget in his prime he put up some great batting averages to go with his power numbers. Also walked about as much as he struck out. He was a truly great hitter when he stayed healthy.

Not what you want to see with your $340 million guy in the first week of the season.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Fernando Tatis Jr. had to come out of the game after getting hurt on a swing. Looked pretty bad: <a href="https://t.co/X49N72HSYo">pic.twitter.com/X49N72HSYo</a></p>&mdash; Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) <a href="https://twitter.com/PavlovicNBCS/status/1379270367261298690?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 6, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Dislocated shoulder, he's had issues with it for years. The more it pops out the easier it gets for it to happen.

It was bothering him a week ago so makes sense. He'll probably need a surgery after the year.

I'm not sure someone asking if Whit Merrifield is the best player to wear a Royals uniform since Brett automatically means they undervalue Lorenzo Cain. It's a relatively subjective question so most answers outside of someone totally silly (Emil Brown or so) are valid.

I'm not a huge analytics guy, but in "debates" like this, WAR is as close to an unbiased overall tool that there is. So, forgetting all players who played before or with Brett, and excluding pitchers the answer to the "best" Royal since Brett question is Alex Gordon. After him it's Carlos Beltran. Then Lo Cain, but Salvy should pass him pretty soon from a Royals WAR perspective.

yep, thats what happened with Bellinger had it pop out the 2 years ago and last year and got surgery on it this last offseason.

Sweeney found some sort of "magic elixir" before the 1999 season and became a machine offensively for about 6-7 years. In 2000, he had 29 HRs, 144 RBIs, 71 BBs, .333 Avg and .930 OPS in 159 games.

He also missed a lot of time in those seasons due to injury and couldn't really play defense.

Healthy, prime Sweeney was as good a pure hitter as you’ll ever see. The problem, as you alluded to, is healthy, prime Sweeney was a rare occurrence. And he was totally worthless in any other category outside of hitting. He was an injury prone wealthy man’s Billy Butler.

John Mayberry.

Why wasn’t Merrifield called up earlier in his career? Imagine if he would have been on the 14-15 a Royals at 2nd instead of Infante....

***Official 2021 Royals Season Repository Thread***
 

Because the disappointment of not getting added to the roster in 15 led to him completely changing his body and becoming a different hitter with more power.

Prior to 2014, Merrifield was nothing special as a hitter. He was a versatile, speedy guy who could make contact.

Honestly, his off-season training regiment from 15 to 16 MIGHT HAVE included something that’s not allowed. It wouldn’t surprise me at all.

The jump in performance he made is pretty consistent with an offseason of PED use (fringe major leaguer turns into starter/star).

So is he continuing to fly under the radar in that respect? Or do you think it was just one offseason of "use" and he's been clean since?

Where are the Cardinals fans to tell us how Matheny sucks?

You really think Whit has used PEDS??? Dude hasn’t grown at all, he’s stayed there same weight. He’s a contact hitter and last I checked PEDs doesn’t make you make contact better at all

Is that overall WAR or WAR/season? I'm not the biggest on how WAR works but seems if someone plays for KC for a decade and a half they are going to have a tiny advantage over someone who was here for half that.