Healthy Greg Bird Can Become All-Star Force for Yankees in 2017

The day Greg Bird hit his first two spring training home runs for the New York Yankees, he told reporters that this spring "just feels like baseball."

"It's awesome," Bird said, according to Dan Martin of the New York Post.

You'd say that, too, if you were back playing baseball after a year's forced absence, the result of a torn right shoulder labrum that required surgery. You'd be pretty excited to swing a bat again and prove you still can.

Bird still can. He always could, which is why his career slugging percentage in the minor leagues (.483) was higher than that of Gary Sanchez (.460) or Aaron Judge (.473). And why his career slugging percentage in the majors (.529) is higher than Josh Donaldson's (.503).

OK, so Donaldson has played 718 big league games and Bird has played 46. The point isn't that Bird is the better player, just that it's hardly a surprise that a healthy Bird can hit.

"He's a really good player," Sanchez told Erik Boland of Newsday.

He's an All-Star in the making, and if he shakes off the rust quickly enough after his full year away, it could even happen in 2017. Bird's name didn't get mentioned that often as the Yankees moved into rebuilding mode last year—that happens when a serious injury keeps a guy from playing—but he can be every bit as big a part of this as Sanchez, Judge, Gleyber Torres and the rest.

The early numbers this spring are encouraging. Bird is hitting .421 in his first 38 at-bats, with a .500 on-base percentage (thanks to six walks) and a .947 slugging percentage (thanks to six doubles and four home runs).

"He has a very good swing path, you don't see him out front a lot and he has very good pitch recognition as well," Yankees manager Joe Girardi told reporters, including Newsday's Boland.

And as a left-handed hitter with home run power, he's ideally suited to play at Yankee Stadium. When the switch-hitting Mark Teixeira hit 39 home runs for the Yankees in 2009, he hit 24 of the 39 at home and 20 of those batting left-handed.

Brian McCann, the left-handed hitting catcher the Yankees traded to the Houston Astros over the winter, hit 69 home runs in his three seasons in the Bronx. He hit 46 of those 69 at home.

Bird got his first chance to play in the big leagues late in the 2015 season, when Teixeira broke a bone in his right leg in August. Forced into a pennant race without any big league experience, Bird homered 11 times in 178 plate appearances.

His nine home runs from the beginning of September to the end of the regular season were tied for fifth in the major leagues.

"They are the real deal," McCann told Joel Sherman of the Post, referring to Bird and Luis Severino, who had a 2.89 ERA in 11 starts as a 21-year-old.

Seventeen-plus months later, the McCann quote reminds you what the Yankees thought of Bird's talent but also of the fickle nature of prospects.

Severino had a poor 2016 that threw into doubt his future as a starting pitcher, and he's having a poor spring that has cast some doubt on his spot on the Yankees' 2017 Opening Day roster.

Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images

Bird was never supposed to be New York's first baseman in 2016, because Teixeira's contract had another year to run. Then came the labrum surgery, which happened just before spring training began. Bird didn't play at all in the 2016 regular season, eventually returning to play 17 games with poor results in the Arizona Fall League.

There's no one blocking his way now, although the Yankees signed Chris Carter with the thought of giving him at-bats against left-handed pitchers. Carter tied for the National League lead last season with 41 home runs for the Milwaukee Brewers, but he wasn't signed to be an everyday player.

Bird will still need to prove he's ready. Early-spring results are a good sign of that, but he'll need to do more when the pitchers get sharper as the spring goes on.

The Yankees can afford to watch and wait, because the end result could be exciting.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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