Ethan Salas hit the first two home runs of his major league life in the same game, and in doing so became the youngest catcher ever to homer twice in one, bettering a mark that had stood since 1976. Fifty years of big league catchers came and went without doing that. A kid the Padres have been babying through the minors did it on a Wednesday night.
Start with how hard the first part is. Getting one big league home run as a catcher is a career for most people. Getting two on the same night, before you are old enough for most of your peers to have finished a college season, is something else entirely. Catching is the position that ages people. It is squats and foul tips and pitcher meetings and the heaviest mental load on the field, which is exactly why organizations almost never rush a young one. San Diego did not rush him either. They just ran out of reasons to wait.
Checked the almanac: Ivan Rodriguez debuted behind the plate for the Rangers in June of 1991 at nineteen years old, and thirteen Gold Gloves later we are all still using him as the measuring stick for what a precocious catcher can become. That is the shelf Salas is reaching toward now. One night does not put him on it. It does tell you the bat is not overmatched, and for a prospect whose defense has never been the question, that is the part the Padres needed to see with their own eyes.
What comes next is the boring, important stuff. Reps. San Diego is at Colorado on Thursday afternoon, and the honest read is that a young catcher's September is measured less by the box score than by how he handles a staff he barely knows, in a ballpark that embarrasses breaking balls. The league will adjust to him by the weekend. It always does. Then we find out what he adjusts back with.
What I'm watching next: how often San Diego actually writes his name in during the closing stretch. Two homers buy attention. Playing time is the club telling you what it really believes.