#51 Nick Kurtz is the thunder

The Opener

1. Aaron Judge is hurt. The game’s preeminent slugger has a flexor strain in his right elbow that he noticed when he “couldn't throw,” which, yeah, usually a sign. He’s on the IL for what the Yankees hope will be the minimum stay, but he’s expected to DH when he returns, which creates a lot of (mostly slow-) moving pieces for Aaron Boone to figure out to keep his lineup competitive.
2. Cal Raleigh Home Run Watch: Cal Raleigh has 41 home runs. That’s a roughly 63-homer pace.
3. Not the most exciting or impactful trade for either team, but a little curious that the Kansas City Royals acquired Randal Grichuk just because I’m not sure people expected the below-.500 Royals to do much major league acquiring at all this deadline. They’re only a handful of games out of the Wild Card — the problem is, so is the rest of the league. Royals GM J.J. Picollo said “It’s very important to us that we keep competing this year.”
4. Also J.J. Picollo, I assume, “Stop asking for our pitcher, he’s OUR pitcher”

That Nick Kurtz game happened fast.

Yes, yes, because the A’s slugger is the first rookie to whack four homers in a game, and because he’s the youngest hitter to whack four homers in a game, and because he was drafted not even 13 months ago, and because he’s already got 23 home runs just 67 games into his big-league career.

Also, though, because he walked to the plate in the 6th inning with a positively pedestrian one homer, more likely to pursue a cycle than four-homer glory. There was no time to anticipate this feat, and that made the whole experience more ecstatic.

You could feel it in the swell of chatter about it online, in the trampoline double-bounce effect of “Nick Kurtz has three homers!” being immediately overtaken by “Wait, Nick Kurtz hit a FOURTH?!” in real time.

Kurtz is making a habit of barreling into the room just ahead of the news that he’s on his way. There are more than two ways to splash land into the baseball universe, but there are really two main ones when you’re the type of talent that went top five in the draft and ranked among the game’s top 25 to 50 prospects. There’s the lightning and the thunder, the Harper and the Soto.

Let me explain. Bryce Harper, you’ll remember, was heralded from his early teen years. The countdown to his arrival in the majors was loud and nationally known before the Nationals even drafted him. Fans knew the storm was coming, so they sat outside and watched the sky. Juan Soto, his accidental successor playing the position of “prodigy” in Washington, was a top 50 prospect in baseball when GM Mike Rizzo summoned him in 2019, but his promotion mostly inspired double-takes and googling. He was shuffling and terrorizing pitchers at the highest level before the appropriate hype rumbled into earshot, the thunder chasing lightning that already struck.

Both ways are fun, to be clear, but there’s something about the build-up of thunder that I love more. It reminds me of Soto, of Mookie Betts raising eyebrows and going from prospect list second banana to modern marvel, of Jacob deGrom going from floppy-haired fill-in to the terminator. This game is a earth-shaking call to attention from Kurtz after a shoulder injury dinged his final year at Wake Forest, keeping him from going No. 1 overall, and as he tries to make a name for himself when his club lacks a home city it’s willing to put on its uniform.

At 6-foot-5, the 22-year-old was described as a “monster” by the A’s director of player development, but his face still looks like that of a bright-eyed teen.

He’s really a monster, though. 

His average bat speed slots in just ahead of Aaron Judge and Kyle Schwarber, seventh in the majors if you drop the qualifying limit down to 100 swings. He’s in the top five for average exit velocity and the top five for how often he hits the ball at the optimal angles. 

The season isn’t over, of course, but among hitters 22 and under with at least 200 plate appearances, only Harper’s 2015 and Willie McCovey’s 1959 debut are ahead of Kurtz’s by park- and era-adjusted wRC+. Even if he slides a bit … it’s a helluva list.

I’m not saying he’s going to land among Those Guys, but maybe so. If nothing else, he has crossed a rubicon in terms of how we root for him. There’s something more concrete to hope for than for him to meet his potential or justify his draft pick or his prospect status. We can root for him to become the first player to hit four homers in a game twice. We can dream of the first five-homer game. Instead of judging every game, every swing against what was envisioned, most of us get to build on the surprise of this bat-wielding horror both knowing what he’s capable of and having no idea at all.

–Zach Crizer

The Bullpen

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One of the great sub-plots of recent baseball history is that Ichiro Suzuki is hilarious. Former teammates and opponents have periodically shared examples and anecdotes over the years, but on Sunday night Ichiro gave his Hall of Fame acceptance speech — in English — and his wit was on full display. In their official release about the event, the Hall called Ichiro’s humor “self-deprecating,” but I strongly beg to differ! He is not deprecating himself, he is deprecating the one writer who left him off their ballot…

And he is definitely deprecating the Marlins…

This is good shit. –HK

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If you want to spend a little more time with the newest Hall inductees: