On September 12, 2004, Eli Manning made his NFL debut. The Giants were down three touchdowns in the fourth quarter, and starting quarterback Kurt Warner had taken four sacks and fumbled twice; maybe let the no. 1 overall pick take a spin.
On Manning’s very first play from scrimmage, he handed the ball to Tiki Barber, who ran for a 72-yard touchdown. Now, Manning would go on to have a very, very good career: 16 years in the league, four Pro Bowls, 366 touchdown passes, two Super Bowls, and untold hundreds of millions of dollars in career earnings. But if you look at Manning’s career through a certain lens, he peaked with that first snap.
A quarterback’s job is to advance the ball down the field and score. And while Barber did most of the work, a one-play, 72-yard touchdown drive is about as good as a debut gets. Manning’s career productivity would never be better than it was after that first play. So it proved, and quickly; on the very next possession, Manning coughed up a fumble of his own on a nightmarish three-way hit. Welcome to The Show, kid.
On Thursday, Opening Day — or whatever comes after Opening Night in MLB’s inscrutable season-opening branding — was very good to four high-profile debutants.
Kevin McGonigle, JJ Wetherholt, and Carson Benge were our no. 5, no. 12, and no. 21 prospects, respectively, on the global Preseason Top 100. McGonigle and Benge were minor leaguers on Wednesday, but now they’re both key starters on World Series contenders. So is Justin Crawford, who also made his major league debut on Opening Day.
And all four of them came up big, right away. Actually, it was even better than that. No. 26 overall prospect Chase DeLauter took Logan Gilbert deep in his very first regular season plate appearance in the big leagues, then added a second home run in the ninth inning. Wild stuff.
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But as you might remember, DeLauter got into two games for the Guardians last postseason. He might technically still be a rookie, but those two games and seven plate appearances in the playoffs mean he’s basically Carl Yastrzemski next to the other guys. Homering off a pitcher like Gilbert is no mean feat, but it’s less newsworthy from a grizzled vet like DeLauter.
The four actual debutants all had a terrific first taste of big league action. So much so that while one or more of these kids might become an All-Star, a World Series winner, even a Hall of Famer, the median day in the big leagues is not going to be this good.
Let’s start with Crawford, who went 2-for-4 and scored on Alec Bohm’s fifth-inning home run, much to the delight of his father, four-time All-Star Carl Crawford. Crawford wasn’t the headline player in the Phillies’ 5-3 win over Texas. That would be Cristopher Sánchez, who cakewalked to 10 strikeouts over six scoreless innings. Or Kyle Schwarber, who homered in his first at-bat of the season. Or Bohm, who in addition to homering himself, is apparently suing his parents for allegedly stealing millions of dollars while they managed his earnings through an LLC.
The Phillies don’t need Crawford to be a superstar, which is good, because the ceiling for him is lower than it is for McGonigle, Wetherholt, or Benge. Crawford is a plus-plus runner who torched the minor leagues, but he hits the ball on the ground at a rate that has historically just not been survivable in the big leagues. That’s not to say he will fail, or even that I expect him to fail. Rather, if he does turn out to be a valuable player on a contender, one of two things will have had to have happened: Either Crawford will have to change something about his game — hit the ball harder, hit it in the air more, or both — or he will have to turn grounders into hits at a rate hitherto unprecedented in the majors. Crawford’s first major league hit is representative of what we’ve come to expect from him:
The good news is that Crawford reached base twice and put the ball in play four times. Odds are, his career OPS will end up lower than 1.000, which is what it’s at as I write. The bad news is that all four of those batted balls came off the bat between 80.3 mph and 87.2 mph, and only one of them — a sixth-inning lineout off Jalen Beeks — was hit at a launch angle that usually leads to damage.
Still, a seeing-eye single looks like a line drive in the box score. I don’t want to nitpick a guy who genuinely had a terrific first day in the big leagues — it’s just something to keep an eye on going forward.
Benge went 1-for-3 with two walks and two runs scored as the Mets beat the Pirates, 11-7, in one of the weirdest games of the opening slate. I thought the Pirates’ defense was going to be godawful this season, but they were even worse than I could possibly have anticipated. That, plus sun, wind, and Oneil Cruz’s decision to leave his sunglasses at home, led to the worst start Paul Skenes has had… maybe ever, like, dating back to throwing a tennis ball at a wall when he was in school.
Before Benge got his first big league hit, a bird fell out of the sky, stone dead, and landed next to him in the outfield. Credit to the reporter who asked the obvious question about whether Benge thought it was an omen:
Carson Benge on The Bird:
— Tim Britton (he/him) (@timbritton.bsky.social) 2026-03-26T21:30:23.394Z
Clearly not; in the sixth inning, Benge came to the plate against a tough right-handed reliever, Justin Lawrence. I mean, Lawrence is usually tough. This pitch was an absolute cement mixer:
And to Benge’s credit, this is what you’re supposed to do with a hanging breaking ball: Hit it 385 feet to center field, off the bus shelter thingy in the home bullpen. I don’t know if Benge’s even going to see a pitch that fat in most of his future games, but it’s good to see that he knows how to strike when opportunity comes knocking.
You know who didn’t see a pitch that fat all game? Wetherholt, who went 1-for-4 with a sacrifice fly out of the leadoff spot for St. Louis.
Wetherholt is not a big guy; he’s listed at 5-foot-9, 190 pounds, and when I interviewed him at the Draft Combine in 2024, he didn’t carry himself with the bearing of someone with plus-plus power. To be clear, this is a strong guy, and he’ll hit the ball hard, but in more of an all-fields line drives kind of way. In 109 minor league games last year, Wetherholt hit .306 with 17 home runs and 28 doubles — that’s the kind of hitter we’re talking about.
So while I’m not surprised in the least to see that he drove in two runs and got his first major league hit in his first game, I did not expect said hit to look like this:
This is a tank, 425 feet to center field. And as if the distance weren’t impressive on its own, look where that pitch is! That’s a four-seamer at 94.5 mph at least a clear ball’s width off the outside corner, and Wetherholt yanked it back to just barely pull-side of center. That takes some strength. Also, this was the 0-2 pitch in an at-bat in which Wetherholt had just swung through a cutter on the outside corner that was designed to tunnel with the pitch he eventually hit out.
That’s pretty sweet. The Cardinals might not be that good this year, but Wetherholt’s going to be a blast to watch.
But no debutant had as good a day as McGonigle.
The Tigers’ top prospect became the just the 25th player in major league history (and the first Tiger since 1987) to record four hits in his first major league game. He either scored or drove in half of Detroit’s runs in an 8-2 victory over the Padres. And it’s not just that he went 4-for-5 with two doubles. McGonigle drove in two runs on the very first pitch of his career:
Next time up, he pulled another line drive down the first base line, missing his first homer by a couple feet. McGonigle’s first three hits — two sliding doubles and an infield single — all showcased his speed, as he beat out strong throws to reach safely each time.
You can see the whole package in this sampling of hits — the quick hands, the legs, the strong lower half — and understand why McGonigle is regarded as a superstar in the making.
Sam Dykstra of MLB Pipeline posted video of McGonigle’s hit from the first base dugout, which is cool because you can see the Tigers’ reaction. But you can also see where McGonigle gets his power from:
Fun reaction from the Tigers dugout on Kevin McGonigle’s first MLB hit:
— Sam Dykstra (@samdykstramilb.bsky.social) March 26, 2026 at 4:26 PM
Don’t skip leg day, kids.
Even a talent like McGonigle might not have another game like this for a while. You know who played 130 games last year and didn’t get four hits in any of them? Mike Trout. Cal Raleigh also didn’t have a four-hit game last year. Neither did Corbin Carroll.
So enjoy these stellar debuts from McGonigle and friends. It’s all downhill from here.