After battling a labrum injury that cost him most of the 2022 baseball season, former Texas Tech standout Josh Jung delayed his major league debut until Friday night when he was finally called into action by the Texas Rangers. In his first big league at bat, he may have been making up for lost time when he stepped to the plate in the bottom of the third inning and belted a solo homer to left-center field.
As he came out swinging, the third baseman, ranked as the Rangers’ top minor league prospect by most scouting services, patiently waited for a changeup in the middle of the plate and found just enough pitch to clear the outfield wall.
This is the first time a Ranger has homered in a major league at-bat since infielder Jurickson Profar did it in 2012.
Moreover, given how Jung has been crushing the ball in AAA, the homer wasn’t a shock to Rangers fans either.
Since returning from spring surgery, Jung has homered just six times in 23 minor league games while hitting .273 and driving in 24. It didn’t disappoint that he eventually called it quits with the Rangers. In the first 2-4.
“I was definitely still nervous,” Jung said after the game. “I was trying to control my heart rate the whole time. I think that was the biggest key for me tonight, just getting the heart rate down. Just to breathe, take it all in, and now I’ve got some good pitches to hit.
Despite hitting 33 bombs in 191 games against Tech, Jung wasn’t necessarily known for his power as a Red Raider. This has led some to question whether he will be able to find enough power to become an All-Star big league third baseman. He still has a long way to go to prove that he’s a power hitter at the top level of the game, but his 30 minor league homers in 153 total games are indicative of his power stroke with wooden bats.
In the seventh inning, Jung fired a single to right field off a foul-sided pitcher, a sign that he was locked in at the plate, but the pitches seemed to find a place to land, even though the pitch didn’t connect.
Also stealing a base in the 7th inning, Jung became the second player in Rangers history to hit a homer and steal a base in his major league debut, joining Anderson Tejeda in 2020 (per TexasRangers.com).
“[It was] goosebumps, honestly, about the first one or even the time when my name was announced before the game during the lineup,” Jung said. “I remember the beginning of the journey that I wanted to go on, the track that I wanted to go on. So it was great. It was very special. But tonight was the biggest thing for me. It was just breathing, breathing it all in. It’s just crazy, honestly. It’s a good start. You just have to keep going.”
In the end, the Rangers fell to the Toronto Blue Jays 4-3 but it didn’t make as much of a difference as Jung did. The reason is that Jung’s first game is the best hope the team has produced for fans of the organization when they lost any hope of the playoffs since July in a losing season at the hands of the Rangers. The last several years have finally come. And he proved his presence right off the bat.
