Or whether we're just seeing the latest version of a story that's already played itself out too many times.
We speak of Mike Yastrzemski, grandson of Hall of Famer Carl, lately a stalwart outfielder for our Giants and, if the whole thing isn't half a season's worth of mirage, a most unusual player indeed.
Mike Yastrzemski turned 29 years old two weeks ago. He made his major-league debut-- not his Giants debut, mind you, but his MLB debut-- on May 25 of this year, at age 28 years and 275 days.
And in the the three-plus months since, Mike Yastrzemski has shown every indication of being a solid, reliable, everyday starting major-league outfielder. His numbers across the board are good; not All-Star worthy, perhaps, but good: .270/.326/.531, a .857 OPS, which is best on the team among regulars. He's hit 19 homers in 307 at-bats; his 162-game projections show 34 homers, 95 runs, 92 RBI. Come to think of it, those are All-Star numbers, especially on this team. Having missed the first eight weeks of the season, he's fourth on the club in WAR, just behind Evan Longoria among position players and well ahead of the next guy, Kevin Pillar, and that's playing in significantly fewer games than either.
We're not aware of this ever happening before; we mean in, like, ever. When was the last time a 29-year-old career minor league position player with no major-league experience came up to the bigs and established himself like this? For that matter, when was the first time? Is this it?
It has been our contention for some time, backed up by solid evidence, that this doesn't happen. Sure, pitchers can, and do, rediscover themselves after a decade or so of mediocrity and turn it around-- R. A. Dickey, for example, or Hoyt Wilhelm, or the all-time late bloomer, Hall of Famer Dazzy Vance, a rookie at 31. But hitters? No, it just doesn't happen. By the time you're 27, if not at 26, you are who you are. Potential no longer exists. A 27-year-old minor-league hitter is a finished product-- what you have seen is what you will get. In recent years we watched the trials of Jarrett Parker and Mac Williamson, two guys who put up fine minor-league numbers for years and years, finally getting their shot at the bigs at age 27 or so. And while fans desperate for new faces issued hopeful comments about "giving the kids a chance," there we were, ready to tell them that no, these guys ain't "kids," they're veterans, and second, hitters don't all of a sudden "find it" as they're approaching 30 and magically turn from "AAAA" players into major-league regulars. Oh sure, we see some of them hang on for a year or three as fifth outfielders, pinch hitters, commuters on the AAA shuttle, and so forth, but 150-game regulars? Starters? Never. Seriously. Never.
Until now. "Young Yaz" (relatively speaking) has shown no indication of cooling off. He's batted all over the lineup and done well. He gets on base enough to be a competent leadoff man, but he could bat third, fifth, or eighth. He doesn't strike out much. After 307 ABs, there are no more small sample sizes, no more well-that-was-the-Padres excuses, no more nothing. He's a major-league regular, he is hitting better at 29 than he has in any season since he was 24, and we have no explanation or precedent for it.
We know players coming out of college increase the age floor for rookies; what scouts and coaches looked for in 18- and 19-year olds three decades ago, they now expect to see at 21 or 22. Twenty-year old rookies were once common; now only the Mike Trouts, the Bryce Harpers, the Vlad Guerrero juniors, the generational talents make it to the bigs at that age. So yes, we see a lot of 25-year-old rookies now. Maybe, in time, we'll see more rookies at 29. But folks, we've never seen one like this before.
Looking for clues in his minor-league career, we see Yaz's Peter Principle kicked in every time he reached Baltimore's Bowie, Maryland, AA team in the Eastern League. A fine hitter coming out of Vanderbilt at 23, Yaz would put up good numbers again and again in A and A+ ball, then be promoted to AA Bowie, and his numbers would fall off. This Sisyphean journey continued for five full years. He hit well at Norfolk in AAA ball in 2017, and that could have been the turning point-- but last year his numbers dropped, and then cratered when he landed back at Bowie: .202/.276/.327. The Orioles-- the 100-game-losing Orioles, mind you-- looked him over one more time, shrugged, and traded him to the Giants for a guy you never heard of. Looking at the numbers, it's hard to blame them.
Reviewing Jarrett Parker's minor-league stats over a similar span of years, he looks like the better player. Parker was always willing to take a walk, he had real power though his strikeout rate was appalling, and even accounting for the hit-happy PCL he grades out as a better minor-league player in 2017 than was Yaz a year ago. Yet Yaz is tearin' it up for the Giants and Parker languishes in the Angels' system. (Well, he was languishing-- he got a September 1 callup and so far has gone 0-for-12.)
What's the chance Yaz will still go the way of Parker, of Mac, of any number of players who looked promising but ultimately reverted to what their minor-league numbers said they were all along? (Chris Shaw, a favorite of those same hopeful fans, is reaching the same threshold now.) There is no way to tell. Yaz can certainly still improve-- we'd like to see him walk more, as he did in the Oriole system, and given the way he's turned his hitting around, showing a little more discipline up there shouldn't be a stretch since he's done it before. Defensively, he's a good fielder with average range, and skilled enough to play both left and right. On the Giants, he even has something of a comp-- Alex Dickerson, another 29-year-old minor-league veteran who started blasting the ball as soon as he arrived, but who has battled recurring injury throughout his career and is currently out of action. To us, that gives Yaz more upside. It's hard to believe at this point that he hasn't earned a job as the starting left fielder going into 2020. The question is, of course, can he keep it? Can he take what he's started here and have a five-to-six year career as a major-league regular?
Well, we don't know, and you don't either, because as near as we can tell this is uncharted territory.
On the fine Bleacher Report site, David Cucchiara posted a list of the "ten most legendary late bloomers in baseball history." Of the three position players-- Jose Bautista, Dante Bichette, and Lefty O'Doul-- none are really comparable. Bichette and Bautista hadn't done much before they exploded on their respective scenes at age 29, it's true, but both were legitimate major-leaguers for several years before that-- Bautista got 500 at-bats with the Pirates at age 24. O'Doul was a star in the old PCL, a strong independent minor-league in the 1920s; that he didn't sign a major-league contract until he was 30 doesn't mean he couldn't have played well in the big leagues if he'd wanted to. He certainly did once he arrived.
But if anyone out there finds another 29-year-old true rookie putting up these kinds of numbers as an everyday starting outfielder over three-fourths of a season on a major-league team, we'd like to hear about it, because we haven't found him.
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