I was pretty excited to watch Joshua Báez at Wrigley Field today. I knew that he developed a proclivity for socking some dingers in the minor leagues and I figured there was a decent chance he could sock one at Wrigley Field in his MLB debut. But…I can’t say I saw this coming.

Cards on the table–I started writing this post nine pitches into Joshua Báez’s MLB career, which normally would be extremely early to write a full post dedicated to a single player but so, so much has already happened. In the first pitch he saw as a big leaguer, he hit a home run nearly 450 feet into deep left center field–while Wrigley Field famously has a tendency to create some home runs with its Lake Michigan wind effects, the only park I can think of where this wouldn’t have easily been a home run would be Yellowstone. And then in his next two plate appearances, it wasn’t like Báez was specifically striving for home runs. In his second plate appearance, he fell behind 0-2 and suddenly showed patience that, while fairly ordinary for a typical Major League hitter, seems outright impossible for somebody whose heart was certainly ready to burst through him like the Alien baby. And then he hit another home run. And then in his third plate appearance, he hit his third. At the minimum, Báez’s fourth career plate appearance is going to happen while I am writing this. And I reserve the right to just start exclaiming while typing if he ties the MLB record for home runs in a game. This has been my reaction to most of what has happened already today.

The home run on the first pitch he saw in the big leagues was crazy enough. Báez became the first Cardinal to homer in his first career plate appearance since Lane Thomas in 2019. He became the first Cardinal to homer on the first pitch he faced in the big leagues since Adam Wainwright, and while it seems crazy that the last guy to do it was a pitcher, the first-pitch home run hitter before that was also a pitcher (Gene Stechschulte). And I know Wainwright was a good hitter for a pitcher, but let’s not pretend he was Shohei Ohtani–perhaps the first pitch home run thing is just a matter of luck. Who cares, still cool. This was only the third time in the last decade that somebody hit a home run on his first career pitch, which seems pretty notable and also like one of the less notable things about his day.

(While I was writing the previous paragraph, Joshua Báez lined out to left field. Honestly, he hit the ball pretty hard and had some pretty solid takes prior to making contact. It’s the kind of plate appearance that under normal circumstances we would think was pretty solid from a debutante.)

In the second plate appearance, Báez battled and joined rarefied air, becoming just the third player in Major League history to hit a home run in his first two MLB plate appearances. Incredibly, both of the previous cases also happened for players representing St. Louis teams–Bob Nieman, for the 1951 St. Louis Browns, and Keith McDonald, for the 2000 St. Louis Cardinals. Nieman, who hit 125 home runs in a solid career that extended to parts of twelve seasons, sadly did not live to see McDonald match his feat, passing away in 1985, but McDonald is still around, and don’t you worry–I have already texted my Cardinals organizational connection to see if he could make Keith McDonald throwing out a first pitch to Joshua Báez happen. A side note: as somebody who only played with the Cardinals, had a career batting average of over .300 (he had 11 career plate appearances), and was not born in the United States (he was born in Japan), Keith McDonald is an absolute GOD of Immaculate Grid. If there’s an uptick in his score next time I use him, I’ll know you guys read this post. Thank you.

By the third plate appearance, it increasingly felt like we were experiencing a simulation. A player hitting a home run in his third career plate appearance, while not exactly national or international news, is still a thing I’d be posting about the group chat on its own. An opposite field home run to hit three home runs in a game–a feat that was never accomplished in the 500+ home runs careers of Rafael Palmeiro, David Ortiz, nor Gary Sheffield–against one’s biggest rival on the road, is already a locally significant deal. To do it in your MLB debut, before you ever make an out, defies what seems like should be realistic. If you started a player career in MLB: The Show and hit home runs in your first three plate appearances, you’d start the career over on a higher level because obviously this is going to get boring real fast.

From a pure “number of home runs hit” perspective, the Cardinals record still belongs to Mark Whiten, but from a perspective of how absolutely absurd of a statistical outlier this was, the only accomplishment in franchise history that I think is even comparable is Fernando Tatis hitting two grand slams in an inning. But the crazy part there is less the accomplishment itself, and more the circumstances that allowed it to happen. Tatis is the only player in MLB history to bat twice with the bases loaded in the same inning–that he came through is obviously impressive but it’s not like there’s been a ton of times where it reasonably could have happened. Joshua Báez is the 23,752nd player in MLB history to debut, and in theory, any of them could have gotten home runs in their first three plate appearances (no player has hit a home run in their first plate appearance and then never gotten another one, for what it’s worth). But only Joshua Báez did it. And that’s…man, that’s so cool.