Joshua Baez Just Became the First Player Ever With 3 Home Runs in an MLB Debut, and Cardinals Fans Are Losing Their Minds
The most famous MLB debut in the history of the sport happened Saturday at Wrigley Field, and it was not even close.
St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Joshua Baez hit three home runs in his first three at-bats in the big leagues, becoming the first player ever to accomplish that feat. The Cardinals beat the Cubs 8-4, and Baez went from prospect to national name in the span of a single afternoon.
Three swings. Three homers. Every direction of the ballpark.
The Impossible Thing He Just Did
Consider the odds. Roughly 20,000 players have appeared in MLB games. None of them had ever hit three home runs in their first three at-bats. Baez did it against a division rival, on the road, at one of the most iconic ballparks in baseball. That is the kind of Hollywood script no producer would greenlight because it feels too far-fetched.
Cardinals fans watching at home experienced every emotion available to a baseball fan in about 90 minutes. Excitement. Disbelief. Then this dizzy feeling that they had just watched a franchise-altering moment in real time.
Who Baez Actually Is
Baez is a Dominican-American outfielder the Cardinals have been developing for years. He was a well-regarded prospect coming up through the system, but the “three home run debut” version of him was not exactly the projection any scouting service had penciled in.
He is an athletic outfielder with power. Nobody was projecting him as the second coming of Ted Williams. Then he showed up at Wrigley and started spraying baseballs into different sections of the stadium.
His Triple-A teammates had a wholesome live reaction to the debut, and the video of that has been circulating too. The minor leaguers who spent years playing alongside him were as shocked as everyone else. That is the tell that this was not the expected version of Baez performing to spec.
The Immediate Dodgers Jokes
The internet took about eight seconds to make Dodgers jokes.
Los Angeles just gave up a massive package to pry Tarik Skubal from the Tigers before the trade deadline. Every joke going around online right now assumes the Dodgers are already on the phone about Baez. That kind of instant “the Dodgers are going to take him” reaction says everything about where the league’s competitive imbalance is right now.
Fortunately for Cardinals fans, the trade deadline has already passed. The Dodgers cannot actually pry Baez away from St. Louis until at least the offseason, and even then, the Cardinals have every reason to lock him up long-term.
What Comes Next
The regression is real. Baez is not going to keep hitting home runs at this rate. Nobody has. The odds of him going three-for-three with three homers again this season are astronomical.
But he does not have to. He just gave the Cardinals a foundational moment that fans will talk about forever. If he plays out the rest of the year and hits .240 with 12 home runs, that is a totally normal outcome for a rookie. His debut still stands as historic.
If he actually keeps mashing, the Cardinals suddenly have a young centerpiece to build around at a time when the organization badly needed one. Rookie of the Year odds have already crashed in his favor.
Cardinals fans have been waiting for this kind of homegrown moment for years. Joshua Baez delivered it in three swings. He is going to be a very famous man for a very long time, and every at-bat for the rest of his career will be compared to the day he did the impossible.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
