Didn't He Pitch for the Yankees?

Great insight from Jeff Sullivan, MLB Editor at SB Nation...

A few guys have debuted this week. There was Strasburg, of course. There was Jose Tabata with Pittsburgh. There was Brad Lincoln with Pittsburgh. There were probably some other guys, too. And there was Mike Lincoln with Florida.

In any other year - in any other Strasburg and Heywardless year - Mike Stanton might be all the rage. Mike Stanton is 20 years old. He got promoted to the Marlins from AA after slugging .726 over 240 trips to the plate. Mike Stanton is an absolute beast, as promising a power prospect as any we've seen in years, if not decades.

I'm not here to give you any sort of obscure numerical insight on Stanton. He's coming from AA. Not only are the numbers there more limited and harder to find - they also mean a lot less. The competition is worse, the environments are more poorly understood, and the scorekeepers are bad. No, I'm just here to point out what I find to be perhaps the most amazing of Stanton's statistical exploits.

It isn't the 1.167 OPS or the 21 homers he hit in AA Jacksonville. No, it's the 39 homers he hit in single-A Greensboro in 2008, at the tender age of 18.

18. Jason Heyward was in the same league in the same year, and he was also 18. Heyward hit 11 balls out of the park. 18 year old Matt Dominguez hit 18. So did 18 year old Freddie Freeman. Jesus Montero hit 17. Mike Stanton finished with a 13-homer lead over second place Cody Johnson, who was a year older.

When Miguel Cabrera was 18, he played in A-ball. He hit seven homers. Adrian Beltre was one of the best teenage prospects baseball had ever seen, and when he was 18, he hit 26. Albert Pujols only hit 19 after being drafted at 20. And so on and so forth.

When Mike Stanton was 18, he hit 39 home runs.

And he's barely slowed down as he's climbed the ladder. His numbers suffered a little bit upon his first promotion to Jacksonville a year ago, but he very clearly figured things out in 2010, and while I imagine he'll face some obstacles after skipping AAA and jumping straight to the bigs, it's impossible not to get excited. Mike Stanton can't drink, and he's already accomplished some things in the professional ranks that few ever have.

Stephen Strasburg in Washington. Jason Heyward in Atlanta. Mike Stanton in Florida. The NL East is the new center of baseball.

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