Kansas City Royals' Whit Merrifield an ironman, outlier in today's game
By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer
Twenty-six years ago Monday, Cal Ripken Jr. played in his 2,131st consecutive game, passing Lou Gehrig for tops on the all-time list. Ripken went on to play 501 more games in a row and finished his iconic streak at 2,632 before finally taking a day off on Sept. 19, 1998.
That remains one of the most incredible accomplishments in baseball history, and it made Ripken one of the century’s most celebrated athletes.
In today’s league, Ripken’s consecutive games played streak is as unbreakable a record as Cy Young’s 511 wins or Pete Rose’s 4,256 hits. The game has changed so drastically, even in just the past half-decade, that it’s inconceivable that a player could get to 1,000 games in a row, let alone more than 2,600. In the era of "load management," players, especially early in their careers, are regularly given days off to keep their minds clear and their bodies healthy.
But there’s still one player in the bigs who approaches things, shall we say, Ripken-style. As of Sunday evening, Whit Merrifield, the second baseman for the Kansas City Royals, has played in 443 consecutive games, far and away the longest active streak in MLB.
But for Merrifield, building a streak such as this wasn’t anything he set out to do. It just kind of happened.
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There’s no greater baseball cliché than a guy saying he takes it "one day at a time," but there’s truth behind every cliché.
"It wasn’t, like, a cognitive decision or moment where I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna play every day,'" the Royals' infielder told FOX Sports. "I honestly just kept showing up to the park and kept getting put in the lineup."
Merrifield has played in every Royals game since he took a full day off on June 24, 2018, a game that featured a Lucas Duda home run off former Astro Gerrit Cole in an 11-3 Houston win. Merrifield says he remembers nothing about that day.
What Merrifield does, however, remember are the moments during this run when he’s had to play through something significant. "In Cincy last year, I was playing in center field and dove for a ball, landed on my shoulder," he recalled. "And I couldn’t throw for a week. I really couldn’t throw further than, like, 30 feet, but my swing wasn’t affected. And earlier this year in Oakland, I fouled a ball off the top of my back foot, and it got me good. It hurt so bad it woke me up in the middle of the night."
Both times, Merrifield, says he went to the training staff and worked out the injury to the point that he felt good enough to play. "That time I hurt my shoulder, I told them I could swing, but I can’t make a throw to a base if I need to," he said, "and they told me they still wanted me out there if I could be out there."
Merrifield’s 443-game streak puts him right around the top 50 in baseball history. If he makes it through this season unscathed and plays another 162 next year, he’ll finish the 2022 season 20th all time. But given that Merrifield is already in his age-32 season, getting anywhere near Ripken is flat-out impossible.
Think about it like this: Merrifield will finish this season with 469 games in a row, which means he’s basically a Lou Gehrig streak away from Ripken.
He’d have to play more than 13 more seasons without missing a single game to catch Cal. Maybe Merrifield can find the Fountain of Youth somewhere in western Missouri, but I’d bet against him — or really anyone — playing until age 45.
Still, putting together such a streak is incredibly impressive, especially in a day and age when across the league, days off are just part of the plan. But Merrifield explained that he doesn’t particularly have any interest in taking a day off. If he can play, he’ll play.
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"It’s a short window of time where you get to be a major leaguer," he said. "I’d like to be out there every minute I can and play as much as I can. With the way analytics are now, all these tests that we do daily, show the front office — ‘hey, maybe this guy is not jumping as high as he was yesterday. Let’s give him a day off.’ To me, all this sort of stuff is eyewash. It’s a driving factor nowadays, but I’m doing my best to go against the grain."
Underneath all the baseball guy bravado and old-school sports jargon is a pretty straightforward situation: Whit Merrifield likes playing baseball. A lot. It’s clear from speaking to him that the streak isn’t something he actively thinks about, but every day when he gets to the stadium and the manager asks if he’d like a day off, Whit would simply rather play than watch.
Some of that approach can be traced to Merrifield’s minor-league journey. Drafted in the ninth round by Kansas City after a legendary college career at South Carolina that included a walk-off single to win the College World Series, Merrifield languished in the minors for six seasons. He didn’t reach the bigs until he was 27 and didn’t become a full-time player until he was 28.
"The fact that I spent so much time down there," he explained, "makes me want to cherish every day up here."
The "guys just don’t play every day like they did in the old days" narrative is equal parts eye-roll-inducing and true. This season, only three players have played in all of their teams' games: Merrifield, Dansby Swanson and Marcus Semien. Swanson is the only big leaguer within shouting distance of Merrifield, with a streak of 204 games dating to the end of the 2019 season. Compare that to 1982, the year Ripken’s streak began, when eight players played all 162 games.
But when I asked Merrifield if he takes pride in having the longest active streak, in being a guy who plays daily in an era of rest, he kind of shied away from the accomplishment.
"[The streak] is obviously something special I’ll be able to appreciate later on, when it’s all said and done," he said. "Right now, though, I’ve just got so much other stuff to worry about. Trying to help us win — we gotta get to the point over here when we’re winning again.
"That’s another factor for me. I don’t feel like I can help if I’m on the bench."
Merrifield's reaching 443 games in a row has been a perfect storm of sorts. It has taken luck, positional versatility, being on an AL team, being on a bad team and, of course, the skill to perform consistently enough to not get benched. This three-year run has solidified Merrifield as one of the league’s more unique players. He's a walking baseball stereotype who refuses to take a day off, the closest thing there is right now to Ripken while still a universe away.
"It will be cool when it’s all said and done to look back on it," Merrifield said. "But right now, I’m just trying to take it a day at a time."
Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.