Jason Heyward in RF
Posted by Andy on April 5, 2010
When Jason Heyward takes the field today for the Braves, he will become the 10th player in the last 20 years to make his major-league debut in right field on Opening Day (more correctly, in his team's first game of the season.)
Below is the entire list drawn from the available box scores (1920-1939, 1952-present.) I am guessing that Heyward is the youngest player to do it in this group although I haven't checked anybody (and there seems to be a bug when combining Age as a search criteria with the function for the first X games of a player's career.)
I left the WPA column in there after noticing that the most recent guy to do it before Heyward was Kosuke Fukudome and he had a whopping .467 WPA on that day. That was entirely thanks to a 3-run game-tying homer he hit of Brewers' closer Eric Gagne in the bottom of the ninth, reducing the Brewers' WE for the game from 81% to just 35%. The Brewers did win, however, on a Tony Gwynn Jr. sac fly in the 10th inning.
Anyway, cheers to Jason Heyward. Hopefully today is the start of a long, successful career for him.
April 5th, 2010 at 9:30 am
Baines and Guillen were both pretty young, too, but Heyward's still a couple months younger.
April 5th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
that HR was unbelievable, crushed it.
hes gonna be good
April 5th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
Cubbies wins "Sample Size" award for the year. At least, so far. 😀
April 5th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
I remember both Buddy Bell and Bill Russell as infielders, but I see on their player pages that they started out in the outfield. I knew that Bill Russell made a reverse move from what often happens, going from outfield to shortstop, but I thought that was done at the minor league level.
April 6th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
I thought so too, D.D., but it appears that the transition began in 1970, Russell's second year in the majors, and was completed in 1972. As far as I can tell, up through 1969 Russell had played only in the outfield. (I own a '69 Sporting News Baseball Guide, which confirms that Russell played 114 games in the outfield at Bakersfield in 1968, none at any other position.) He spent some time at Spokane in 1970 playing outfield and third base, and in 1971 he split his games in L.A. nearly evenly between second base and the outfield. Going into the 1972 season, he had played one game at short in the minors and seven in the majors. It was a huge transition, and it took place in the majors.