{"id":257710,"date":"2025-08-19T05:15:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T05:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/257710\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T05:15:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T05:15:11","slug":"royals-mike-yastrzemski-joins-rickey-henderson-in-incredible-mlb-leadoff-history-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/257710\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals’ Mike Yastrzemski joins Rickey Henderson in incredible MLB leadoff history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Royals’ Mike Yastrzemski joins Rickey Henderson in incredible MLB leadoff history<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a><\/p>\n

Mike Yastrzemski is having quite the start to his Kansas City Royals career.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

He was golfing less than a month ago when he got off the course and learned he had been dealt from the San Francisco Giants to Kansas City. But if it shocked him then, he hasn’t seemed shocked since putting on a Royals uniform.<\/p>\n

Yaz is in rare company in MLB history, having done something that only Rickey Henderson has ever done better.<\/p>\n

Yastrzemski has hit three leadoff home runs now with the Royals in just 15 games.<\/p>\n

That’s second-best in MLB history for getting to three leadoff home runs in the fewest career games with a particular team.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Juan Soto, Josh Naylor and Cal Raleigh are making stolen bases cool again<\/a><\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Only Henderson did it faster, hitting three leadoff bombs in just seven games when he joined the Mariners.<\/p>\n

The stat comes via OptaStats<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It hasn’t been a perfect start for\u00a0Yastrzemski with the Royals. He’s only hitting .222 overall, and he has four homers total, only one coming in a non-leadoff variety.<\/p>\n

But because he has four homers and four doubles so quickly, along with eight walks, he actually has a .905 OPS.<\/p>\n

Yastrzemski is doing damage in Royals blue.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Phillies’ pitcher Matt Strahm has the funniest reason for investing in Pokemon cards<\/a><\/p>\n

He came up in the Orioles’ organization but never played in the majors for Baltimore, so before this, the Giants had been his only MLB team.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Yastrzemski is now learning what it’s like to play in the American League, and he’s trying to prove Kansas City belongs in a late-season discussion.<\/p>\n

If he keeps leading off games with homers, that’ll go a long way.<\/p>\n

MORE MLB NEWS:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Royals’ Mike Yastrzemski joins Rickey Henderson in incredible MLB leadoff history originally appeared on The Sporting News Mike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[143,5,3297,94,134,936,2123,55,2596,2595,1103,119,4,40,16005,252,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-257710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-baltimore","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-cal-raleigh","11":"tag-josh-naylor","12":"tag-juan-soto","13":"tag-kansas","14":"tag-kansas-city","15":"tag-kansas-city-royals","16":"tag-kansascity","17":"tag-kansascityroyals","18":"tag-matt-strahm","19":"tag-mike-yastrzemski","20":"tag-mlb","21":"tag-phillies","22":"tag-rickey-henderson","23":"tag-royals","24":"tag-san-francisco-giants"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115053731920422194","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}