I almost fell out of my chair this morning when I saw this. Good chance most of you don’t even know Jacob Wilson.
His dad is Jack – the long time shortstop of the Pirates and Mariners and one of the best defensive infielders of his time.
Jacob went to Grand Canyon in Arizona where he was a 1st team all American and the 6th overall pick of the 2023 draft. This is where things get insane.
Jacob Wilson was scouted as a contact first hitter with some pop and a good glove. He’s a born shortstop with a unique skillset and MLB bloodlines. The big question was if he could hit for power, but nobody really questioned if he could hit in the first place. Just a matter of how big would he hit for.
Well then Jacob Wilson got to professional baseball and hit .401 in 80 minor league games including a .433 average last year in 225 plate appearances of AA and AAA.
I repeat.
Jacob Wilson hit .433 at the highest level of the minor leagues last year for half the season before making his MLB debut.
In all the years and time of me watching and talking about baseball, this is by far the highest batting average at any stop I can recall. You’d have to go back to Gordon Beckham’s junior year at Georgia for me to find a comparable and that’s SEC competition.
I really can’t find the words to explain how good Jacob Wilson is at hitting so thankfully Ryan Spaeder made this comparison this morning.
And even then I still can’t believe this. One more time:
That’s literally SO MUCH BETTER than Tony Gwynn to start his career. And obviously we got so much more baseball to play but we’re not talking about the future. We’re talking about right now. And right now Jacob Wilson has a notably better start to his career than easily one of the best pure hitters of all time in Tony Gwynn.
And as I type this, I wonder how much people care that there’s this kind of pace out there right now. He’ll be at 1,000 hits by the time he’s 27 and 2,000 before 32.
And remarkably, that’s around the same pace as Tony Gwynn in reaching 3,141 career hits.
Now as you say any of this stuff, people want to freak out and claim blasphemy. They’ll say I don’t know shit and Jacob Wilson sucks and a bunch of stuff. Which could or could not be true, neither of which is the point.
For now I just want to raise awareness about how good Jacob Wilson has been to start his career. Even as the A’s are 1-21 in their last 22. That doesn’t change the fact they have a sweet shortstop who rakes the shit out of the baseball and is on pace to get more hits than Tony Gwynn through his first 88 games.
I thought these days were gone but they’re still very much alive.
Spaeder says it best
Don’t wait til it’s over to embrace greatness.
Start now.
Start here.