Bobby Witt Jr. Leaves 2-Character Message For Royals Fans After Injury Scare
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The Kansas City Royals and their fans endured a scare that no team should have to go through during spring training on Wednesday afternoon.
In the fifth inning of the Royals' game against the Seattle Mariners, superstar shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. took a 96-mile-per-hour fastball from closer Andres Muñoz to the left forearm. He was removed from the game, and because the contest wasn't televised, most of the baseball world had no idea how severe the injury was or was not.
Fortunately, the Royals seem to have avoided a worst-case scenario. X-rays came back negative, and though it's unclear when Witt will be able to return to the field, he doesn't seem to be headed for a lengthy absence.
There's still more to learn in the next few days as the Royals continue their injury evaluation, but in the immediate aftermath of the hit-by-pitch, Witt sent a well-received message to the baseball world.
Witt took to X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday evening and posted a message to Royals fans that was all of two characters long: a thumbs-up emoji and a prayer hands emoji. The tweet had over 8,400 likes as of Thursday morning.
Never one to miss out on an opportunity to engage with the fans, Royals first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino quote-tweeted Witt's post with an image of the shortstop holding his phone and captioned it, "Watched him tweet this (while using left hand)."
There is perhaps no more irreplaceable player on any team in baseball right now than Witt. He was everything to the Royals last season, playing 161 games and racking up 10.4 fWAR, the most of any player in a single season in franchise history.
If Witt doesn't have to miss any regular season games, or even if he does, but it's only a handful, the Royals have to consider themselves lucky this wasn't a bigger disaster.
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Jackson Roberts is a former Division III All-Region DH who now writes and talks about sports for a living. A Bay Area native and a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University, Jackson makes his home in North Jersey. He grew up rooting for the Red Sox, Patriots, and Warriors, and he recently added the Devils to his sports fandom mosaic. For all business/marketing inquiries regarding "Kansas City Royals On SI," please reach out to Scott Neville: scott@wtfsports.org
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