Major League Baseball

MLB's top prospect, Wander Franco, debuts with Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday

Updated Jun. 22, 2021 9:25 p.m. ET

By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer

Wander Franco is the first big leaguer born in 2001, and I'm here to tell you why that matters.

Baseball’s top prospect has arrived. Franco, the Rays’ 20-year-old shortstop of the future, has officially been called up to the bigs. The consensus top prospect in minor-league baseball will make his debut Tuesday at home against Boston.

If this is the first you’re hearing about Franco, now is the time to learn. The dude is a phenom, a force of nature, as good of a prospect as the game has seen in years. He is a very good defensive shortstop with crisp hands and an above-average arm.

But his true magnificence comes at the plate.

Franco is an advanced hitter beyond his years. His combination of bat speed, barrel control and discipline doesn’t exist anywhere else in the minors. He isn't a home run hitter as much as he's an outstanding, all-around slugger who smacks the baseball at hilariously high speeds — and sometimes the ball goes over the fence.

Franco scorched his way through the minors in 2018 and '19 and continued to show off his skills at the alternate site in 2020. During this ascension, he dominated minor-league pitching to the tune of a .332/.398/.536 slash line. Oh, and that entire time, he was three to six years younger than the league average.

In Triple-A Durham this year, Franco was almost seven years younger than the average player.

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When he heads to the Tropicana Field turf tonight, Franco will become the youngest player active in the majors, supplanting Nationals infielder Luis Garcia by almost a full year. Franco will also be the first major leaguer born in 2001, a tidbit that at first sounds like an irrelevant fun fact but is actually a pretty good signifier of how Franco’s career might turn out.

Baseball history shows that being the first MLB player born in a particular year often results in a lengthy and spectacular career.

This isn’t exactly rocket science. The younger a player gets called up, the more impressive a prospect he is likely to be. Impressive prospects turn into All-Stars and Hall of Farmers more often than 28-year-old Triple-A lifers.

But the track record of these yearly trailblazers is almost shockingly good. Here’s the list, which starts with … A-Rod!

Born in 1975: Alex Rodriguez

1976: Édgar Rentería

1977: Andruw Jones

1978: Aramis Ramírez

1979: Adrián Beltré

1980: Albert Pujols

1981: Carlos Zambrano

1982: Wily Mo Peña

1983: Edgar González

1984: Andrés Blanco

1985: Fabio Castro

1986: Félix Hernández

1987: Justin Upton

1988: Clayton Kershaw

1989: Madison Bumgarner

1990: Starlin Castro

1991: Julio Teheran

1992: Bryce Harper

1993: Jurickson Profar

1994: Rougned Odor

1995: Roberto Osuna

1996: Julio Urías

1997: Ozzie Albies

1998: Juan Soto

1999: Fernando Tatis Jr

2000: Elvis Luciano

Other than a weird stretch with the birth years from 1983 to '85, this is a pretty mind-blowing list. In total, these 26 players have 80 combined All-Star Games, 36 Silver Sluggers, 22 Gold Gloves, eight MVP awards, four Cy Youngs, two World Series MVPs and two Rookie of the Year awards.

There are three shoo-in Hall of Famers (Pujols, Kershaw and Beltré), plus A-Rod, who has HOF-worthy numbers and will probably get in someday as voters reckon with steroid use. King Félix is borderline, but I think he’ll eventually get in, and Jones has a good chance as well. Also, despite the injuries and ‘OV-ER-RA-TED’ chants, Harper is probably Cooperstown-bound if he can duplicate the first half of his career.

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The other thing that stands out about this group is how international it is. Only six of 26 (A-Rod, Pujols, Upton, Kershaw, Bumgarner, Harper) were drafted. The remainder were signed as amateur free agents during the international signing period. If you’re counting at home, it’s two players from Colombia, three from Curacao, three from Mexico, four from Venezuela and eight signed out of the Dominican Republic (nine if you include Franco).

Amateur prospects from the U.S. and Canada are subject to the draft, which players cannot enter unless they’ve graduated high school and which usually falls around or after their 18th birthdays. International signees are able to begin their careers earlier, as they become eligible after their 16th birthdays. That two-year head start doesn’t necessarily make a huge difference in the long term, but it does allow the best of the best international prospects to zoom up the minor leagues to the bigs much more quickly than their draft counterparts.

What does this mean for Mr. Franco? Maybe a lot. Maybe nothing.

Tatis is on this list, and he’s awesome. But so is Profar, who was supposed to be awesome and turned out to be just an average major leaguer. And I'd literally never heard of Fabio Castro before I started writing this story.

For an MLB team to call you up before your 21st birthday, you generally need to be one hell of a ballplayer and a notably mature dude. Those traits, one would assume, would also be helpful in forging a long baseball career. Wander Franco is darn good at baseball, and by all accounts, he’s a teachable guy with the mentality of an MLB veteran.

He should have one heck of a career, and it starts tonight. Make sure you tune in.

Epilogue:

We were right. This debut was a big deal.

Franco wasted no time hitting his first MLB home run Tuesday night.

Stay tuned for more. He's just getting started.

Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.