Bobby Witt Jr. clearly has the baseball IQ badge maxed out.
The Kansas City Royals star Witt went viral during Saturday’s game for an incredible fake-out that saved his team a run. Kansas City was playing on Saturday against the cross-state rival St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Mo.
In the eighth inning of the contest, Cardinals first baseman Alec Burleson hit an RBI single into left field. The base hit scored lead runner Masyn Wynn, and Royals catcher Elias Diaz tried to nail trailing runner Ivan Herrera at third base instead.
Diaz’s throw sailed way over the head of the Kansas City shortstop Witt, who was covering third at the time, and went into left field. But Witt saved a run on the play by completely fooling Herrera.
Witt kept his glove on Herrera all throughout the sequence, pretending as if he had the ball in his glove and was keeping the tag on Herrera just in case. That led to Herrera remaining firmly planted on the bag, even as his third-base coach and his teammate Wynn were yelling frantically for Herrera to run home.
Here is the video.
Bobby Witt Jr. deked Ivan Herrera to save a run pic.twitter.com/A0B3fQjsVH
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) May 16, 2026
Witt’s awesome play really did not matter in the end as the Cardinals still went on to defeat the Royals by a final score of 4-2. But the two-time MLB All-Star Witt is always a wizard in the field, whether it is with his incredible range at short or with his smarts like on Saturday.
