Watch: Elite Prospect Makes Brilliant Out on the First Play of His MLB Career
There hasn’t been much to get excited about for San Diego Padres fans as the team has the worst record in the National League and is headed for its 12th straight season that ends before October.
The team’s highest-paid and presumably best player, Eric Hosmer, hasn’t found the stroke that made him an All-Star in Kansas City, as the $144 million man is hitting just .250 with 13 home runs.
But there is a glimmer of hope for the future because of the arrival of second baseman Luis Urias, who made his MLB debut on Tuesday.
Urias was the No. 4 prospect in the Padres’ minor league system and the No. 22 prospect in all of baseball. He’s known for his glove, and he wasted no time in showing it off during the very first play of his big league career.
Urias made a diving stop to his left on a grounder, quickly got back to his feet and threw out Mitch Haniger of the Seattle Mariners. The rookie may be just 5 feet 9 inches tall, but he needed every bit of his frame to stretch out and corral the ball.
You often see players ask for the ball after their first career hit to save as a memento, but that play was so good that it wouldn’t have been odd to see Urias ask for the ball of his first career assist.
“I don’t know how I made it,” Urias said. “To be honest, I wasn’t nervous the whole game, maybe because of the diving play. I just enjoyed the moment.”
Urias didn’t get a hit in his first big league game, going 0 for 4, but he did reach base safely by drawing a walk, and his mere presence may have inspired the Padres to defeat Seattle 2-1.
The win came with another Padres rookie on the mound in Jacob Nix. The Southern California native allowed just one earned run over 8.1 innings, and he credited the defense for his performance.
“They were making some ridiculous plays back there. (Shortstop) Freddy (Galvis) and Uri both were making some really, really good plays,” Nix said.
Urias began the season in AAA with El Paso, where he produced at a .296/.425/.545 clip. El Paso has qualified for the Pacific Coast League playoffs, but Padres manager Andy Green felt that this was the right time for Urias to be promoted.
“We felt like he’d done enough in the month of August,” Green said. “He played really, really well. He was kind of challenged at the beginning of the month to kind of step up his game because there was the belief he had more inside of him and he did a great job. He’s a guy we’ve been talking about all year that the time would come, and when would the time be, and we got to the point where we felt the time was now. It gives him the opportunity to play over a month in the big leagues the rest of the year.”
Urias spent parts of five seasons in the minor leagues after signing with the Padres as an international free agent when he was 16 years old.
He hit just 17 home runs over his five minor league seasons, but Urias believes his best attribute at the plate is his batting eye and ability to draw walks.
“I’m the player that I can get on base,” Urias said. “I think that’s my type of play, to put the ball in play and score a couple of runs.”
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