A shirtless Whit Merrifield participated on a fantastic Japanese game show

Wondering what Royals second baseman Whit Merrifield is doing this offseason? Well, wonder no more. Last year's American League stolen-base leader was recently in Japan competing on a show called the Sports Grand Prix Top Athletes. It was pretty wild. Basically, competitors push a button that drops a volleyball many meters away, and they sprint to touch it before it hits the ground. Here, we'll just let Whit explain it below:

Here is Whit explaining what was going on in the short video he shared on Instagram. This is also from an Insta story. pic.twitter.com/yDdAMT4TMH — For Pete's Sake KC (@ForPetesSakeKC) December 20, 2017





Thanks, Whit. Facing off against Olympic sprinter Justin Gatlin and NPB's Haruki Nishikawa, Merrifield seemed to hold his own -- making it to the latter rounds of the competition. Luckily, Twitter user @STRKC8 provided us with some clips of his performance, including a shot of shirtless Whit. Listen to the crowd roar as he removes his tank:





Merrifield ended up losing in the end, but he represented MLB well. This is truly the best kind of offseason training.

h/t Kansas City Star