Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium was supposed to be about George Lombard Jr's big moment. The 21-year-old shortstop made his MLB debut and homered in his second at-bat, becoming the first Yankees rookie to go deep in his debut since Jasson Dominguez took Justin Verlander deep back in September 2023. Instead, the night turned into a soggy, stop-start slog that somehow made Lombard look even better.
The Yankees and Cardinals couldn't get out of their own way with the weather. First pitch was pushed from 7:05 to 8:05 p.m. ET because of storms rolling through the Bronx, and once the game actually started, things didn't get much smoother.
I’ve never seen tarp activity for a game like tonight. What is happening
Then the rain delay turned into a light delay, because of course it did. It was that kind of night.
Rain delay into light delay is certainly a choice
Through all the stoppages, Lombard kept flashing the kind of defense that made him the Yankees' top prospect coming into the year. At 21 years and 63 days old, he's the youngest player to start at shortstop for New York since Derek Jeter did it in June 1995, and on this night he backed that pedigree up with a diving stop that had people online reaching for words like 'wizard.'
Lombard dives to make a defensive play in the infield during the Cardinals-Yankees game, with the scoreboard still showing a scoreless third inning.
That's the pedigree talking. His father, George Lombard Sr., spent 6 years in the majors and has been on big league coaching staffs for the last 11, currently as the Tigers' bench coach. The baseball IQ clearly runs in the family, and it showed up in real time on a night when the Yankees needed literally anything to go right.
But not everyone was thrilled with how manager Aaron Boone handled his prized rookie amid the chaos. Fans online weren't shy about it, with one Barstool account going as far as suggesting Boone deserved to be tarred and feathered for how he was using Lombard through the delays.
It's the kind of hyperbolic reaction that comes with the territory when a can't-miss prospect finally shows up and immediately looks like the best player on the field. Whether Boone actually mismanaged anything or fans just wanted to see more of the kid is beside the point — Lombard turned a rain-soaked, delay-riddled mess of a game into appointment viewing, and that's a pretty good problem for the Yankees to have.