Going to minor league games can mean seeing a bunch of random guys who might one day make it big or seeing a top prospect.
Up until a week before I departed for my Midwest trip, I thought I was seeing some random guys, Then the Royals promoted Bobby Witt Jr. to Triple-A.
Suddenly, my visit to Omaha went from seeing a bunch of random guys who kept bouncing back and forth between Triple-A and the Majors to seeing the future of the Kansas City Royals.
To get to Omaha (or, more accurately, the suburb of Papillion), I mostly followed Interstate 29 but zigzagged around the state lines of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska to knock off a few more counties. It's easy to do this in the Midwest since the counties are so small.
Werner Park has been the home of the Omaha Storm Chasers since 2011, and it goes against a lot of modern ballparks by eschewing the typical downtown location in favor of a suburban setting. It's not even in the same county as Omaha. While TD Ameritrade Park, the home of the College World Series, is located right in the middle of Downtown Omaha, Werner Park is in a suburb without much else in the immediate area. You've got to drive a few miles to find a pregame or postgame hangout spot. Luckily, the parking lot has tailgate areas that resembled spaces you typically see in city parks, complete with benches and grill pits.
The actual stadium was very nice, complete with local beer offerings and a nice lawn area in the outfield. In a lot of ways, it was like a Spring Training park, save for, you know, the fact that it was in Nebraska instead of Arizona.
Witt Jr. went 1-for-5 with a solo homer. The ball definitely jumps off his bat, which is something that scouts look for in players. Scouts often evaluate players off of raw physical abilities and believe that matters like commanding the strike zone can be taught later. Personally, I'd rather take a player with a good eye and then work on his physical conditioning, but the approach that professional scouts take is probably the correct one.
The two main players who stood out aside from Witt Jr. were Jose Miranda, a fast-rising Twins prospect who's turned it on in Triple-A after an unremarkable first few years in the minors, and Nick Pratto, Kansas City's first-round pick from 2017. I didn't know until recently that Pratto hit a walk-off single to win the 2011 Little League World Series, and I've always had a soft spot for guys who made it from Williamsport to the pros. Miranda went 3-for-5 with a homer and Pratto hit a go-ahead grand slam in the bottom of the seventh that ultimately made the difference in a 9-6 Storm Chasers victory over the St. Paul Saints. Griffin Jax pitched six solid innings for St. Paul and left with a 6-3 lead, but Ian Hamilton (the Hamilton from this famous photo) couldn't throw a strike, issuing three straight walks after allowing a single on a pop-up that would be called an error if official scoring rules made any sense. With the tying run on second, Nick Vincent struck Witt Jr. out but left one over the plate for Pratto, who deposited it over the wall in right-center. Joel Payamps, who I've always found interesting because I can't place the origin of his last name at all (he's Dominican, but so are Alen Hanson and Junior Lake), closed it out.
Afterwards, I made sure to get a Runza, a Nebraska staple. It's sort of like if a Hot Pocket, a meat pie and a Philly cheesesteak all got together and had a baby. I had only heard of it before because it was one of the state foods ranked in this tremendous article, in which it was ranked 46th, placed in the "Better-Than-A-Finger-In-The-Eyes" category, which is the "B" tier if we're going by a traditional tier ranking system, in which S is somehow the best, followed by A and B.
Oh, and the Super 8 I stayed at right off of Interstate 80 was surprisingly nice.
States visited: Iowa (first time), Kansas, Nebraska (first time), Missouri
Counties collected: Andrew County, MO; Atchison County, MO; Buchanan County, MO; Cass County, NE; Doniphan County, KS; Douglas County, NE; Fremont County, IA; Holt County, MO; Leavenworth County, KS; Mills County, IA; Nemaha County, NE; Otoe County, NE; Sarpy County, NE
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