Pirates’ Konnor Griffin making history by debuting in MLB at 19 years old originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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Konnor Griffin has reached MLB faster than almost anyone expected.
In the process, the Pittsburgh Pirates‘ shortstop phenom and top prospect in the sport will make quite a bit of baseball history when he debuts on Friday at just 19 years old.
He’s the first teenage position player to appear in an MLB game since Juan Soto did it with the Washington Nationals in 2018, according to MLB’s Sarah Lang.
The last time a teenager appeared this early in a season as a position player? That was Adrian Beltre in 1999, per Langs.
Griffin is slightly younger than Beltre was then, the youngest (19 years, 344 days) to play this early in the season since Andruw Jones in 1997, again according to Langs.
MORE: Braves make baseball history so rare it dates back to the Montreal Expos
How about for the Pirates? MLB.com’s Thomas Harrigan has a few more Griffin stats.
The last teenager to play for the Pirates was back in 1998, when Aramis Ramirez played in 25 games while he was still 19 years old.
Griffin becomes the fifth teenager to play for the Pirates since the end of the 1950s, joining Bob Bailey, Bob Moose, Miguel Dilone and Aramis Ramirez.
Amazingly, Harrigan shares, the Pirates had 11 teenagers play for them just in the 1950s, including Bill Mazeroski.
Griffin will turn 20 later this month, so his time as a teenager in MLB won’t last for that long.
But the fact that he has gotten here this quickly at all, and has generated so much hype in a short period of time, makes this an exciting day for the Pirates.
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