Kuzul

Top prospect Kris Bryant, who made his major league debut Friday afternoon for the Chicago Cubs, is going to be a stud. He just didn’t look the part in his first shot at The Show. Big whoop.

Bryant, whose massive potential and prodigious power have captured the baseball world recently, more or less has not stopped hitting between the minors, Arizona Fall League and this past spring training since being selected second overall in the 2013 draft.

His career slash line in the minors prior to his call-up? Try .327/.426/.667. His 43 home runs between Double- and Triple-A last year led all of baseball, both the minors and the majors. Bryant essentially had become a god-like figure, a baseball-bashing freak of nature who could do no wrong in a batter’s box.

Then he stepped onto a big-boy diamond against a legitimate front-of-the-rotation starting pitcher in James Shields and went hitless in four plate appearances—with three strikeouts—as the Cubs lost to the San Diego Padres, 5-4, at Wrigley Field.

By the end of the game, it felt like a large percentage of Cubs fans—many of whom were oh-so-ready to anoint Bryant their franchise savior before he even crossed the white lines for the first time and who gave him a standing ovation before his first at-bat—had turned into skeptics and critics and skeptical critics of a 23-year-old kid who merely was doing his best to meet their un-meetable expectations.

Folks, it’s one game. Not only that, it was Bryant’s first game. And baseball—despite Bryant’s best efforts to prove otherwise when he led all players with nine homers in spring—is hard.

What’s next? Should we start blaming Bryant for playing too well and forcing everyone to put all the outrageous expectations on him?

The hype machine went into overdrive hours before the game started, when it was announced the Cubs plugged Bryant right into the cleanup spot in their lineup in his very first game:

Still, after all the pandemonium and great expectations leading up to Bryant’s much-anticipated arrival, the fans became a little impatient—to put it nicely—after he struck out in each of his first three trips to the plate.

In fact, one fan even heckled with a very loud, very audible “You suck!” after a particularly meager swing by Bryant resulted in his third whiff, as Timothy Burke of Deadspin and Joe Giglio of WFAN 660 point out:

Three strikeouts in a single game? Bryant must be a bust, because that never happens. Like, ever. Right?

Heading into Friday’s games—not even two full weeks into the 2015 season—already there had been (count ’em) 82 instances of a player striking out at least three times in a game.

In baseball history, a player whiffed thrice or more in his debut 117 times.

So Bryant became No. 83 of 2015 and No. 118 all-time. Join the club. It happens. Would a three-homer game have been better? Duh. But maybe it’s not such a bad thing he got this out of the way.

In his final at-bat, Bryant at least made contact, but that, too, was disappointing, as he hit a sharp grounder to third for a fielder’s choice with the potential tying and winning runs on base in the seventh inning.

Hey, Bryant is far from the first big-time prospect whose first game in the majors didn’t go all that well. Just ask such baseball luminaries as Alex Rodriguez (0-for-3), Mike Trout (0-for-3), Chipper Jones (late-game defensive replacement) and Andruw Jones (1-for-5 with an RBI single and an error), as J.J. Cooper of Baseball America notes.

The good news is Bryant’s defense at the hot corner, which was likely part of the reason the Cubs sent him down to the minors at the end of camp, looked big league caliber.

He started a 5-4-3 double play in his first inning on the field and later even made this highlight-reel diving stab to rob Derek Norris of a base hit down the third-base line:

But it’s not Bryant’s glove work that fans wanted to watch in his debut. They were awaiting an offensive explosion that didn’t come. Disappointing? Sure, a little. Devastating? Uh, no.

After all, consider this:

And especially, this:

What did Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein and company think after Bryant’s 0-for-5 with five whiffs in his first game as a pro in a short-season league with Class-A Boise?

“We had to remind ourselves not to overreact to that, too,” Epstein said Friday, according to Carrie Muskat of MLB.com. “Sure enough, in a couple weeks he was dominating and moving up the ladder.”

Indeed, the world didn’t stop turning, the sun didn’t stop shining, and Bryant hasn’t stopped hitting since. At least, if you don’t base everything off his dramatic, ultra-hyped MLB debut.

Thing is, Bryant has arrived now, and he’s here to stay. While his first game didn’t go all that well, you know what? There’s a game tomorrow.

Statistics are accurate as of Friday, April 17, and courtesy of MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted.

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