Ethan Salas Just Broke a Catching Record That Had Stood Since 1976

Ethan Salas hit the first two home runs of his major league career in the same game, and by the time the second one landed he was the youngest catcher in big league history with a multi-homer game, clearing a mark that had stood since 1976. Fifty years of catchers came through this league and nobody got there younger. The kid did it with the first two swings that ever left a yard on him.

Sit with the shape of that for a second. Most hitters get the first one, then wait weeks for the second. Salas stacked them in one night.

The context is what makes it land. San Diego has been unusually aggressive with him since signing him as a teenage international amateur, one of the most talked-about catching prospects in the sport, and the organization kept pushing him up levels at ages when most kids his age are still figuring out bus rides in the low minors. Catcher is the slowest position in baseball to develop. The receiving, the game-calling, the throwing, the beating your body takes 130 times a summer: that all takes years, and the bat is usually the last thing to show up. Which is exactly why a two-homer night from a catcher this young reads as more than a box score line. The bat wasn't supposed to be the early part.

checked the almanac: ivan rodriguez caught his first big league game for texas at 19 back in 1991, and for a long while people said we'd never see a catcher arrive that young again. baseball keeps finding the exception.

What comes next is the part I care about. The Padres are in Colorado on Thursday afternoon for a 3:10 ET start, and I don't have the lineup card in front of me, so I'm not going to pretend I know whether he's behind the plate or getting the day. September catchers get managed carefully, and a young one gets managed more carefully than most. What I'm watching is the workload: how often he's back there the rest of the month, which starters he gets paired with, and whether his own pitchers keep talking about him the way they have been. Home runs are the headline. The relationship with the staff is the career.