If you’re just now joining us for the start of the 2022 Major League Baseball season, perhaps the first thing you need to know is that the league is absolutely stacked with promising rookies at the outset.

As ranked by MLB.com, 53 prospects who placed within their respective organizations’ top 30 talents opened the season on major league rosters. Included among them are three elite hitters in Bobby Witt Jr., Julio Rodriguez and Spencer Torkelson, plus an unusually live-armed hurler in Hunter Greene.

As he’s 27 years old and a veteran of nine seasons in Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan, Seiya Suzuki isn’t technically a prospect. He is nonetheless a rookie, and certainly one under the microscope after signing an $85 million contract with the Chicago Cubs.

So how are these guys doing so far? Let’s take a quick look and form some knee-jerk opinions that we may or may not come to regret later.

Bobby Witt Jr., Kansas City Royals

Witt came into the year ranked no lower than No. 3 on the major prospect lists, and basically anyone who bothered to look at his swing could pick up ample Mike Trout vibes.

This is to say that the hype surrounding Witt was quite real, so good on the 21-year-old for immediately making a statement with a game-winning RBI double in the Royals’ 3-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians on Opening Day:

Witt went on to add another RBI double on Sunday, and his presence has likewise been felt defensively. He’s a shortstop by nature, but his quick-twitch athleticism and strong arm have resulted in two impressive plays (see here and here) already at third base.

There’s always a catch, though. In Witt’s case, those two doubles are his only hits through 16 at-bats. And while he only struck out once in Kansas City’s first three games before whiffing three times on Monday, only three of his first 11 batted balls crossed the hard-hit barrier with an exit velocity over 95 mph.

If we wanted to overreact to this, we’d say that Witt is merely the next coming of David Fletcher and that the Royals have therefore erred in trusting him to be their guy at the hot corner.

Instead, we’ll come down on the side of it being a good thing that he’s at least making contact at a reasonable rate. And lest anyone doubt that the hard contact will start to come more consistently, we’ll go out on a limb and continue to groove on those Trout vibes.