By now, you’ve probably heard of Nick Kurtz.
On Friday, Kurtz became the youngest player in Major League history -- and the first rookie -- to hit four home runs in a game. He recorded 19 total bases, tying Shawn Green for the most total bases in a single game since at least 1900. In his 66th career game, the A’s first baseman had one of the greatest single-game performances in baseball history.
Kurtz made his MLB debut on April 23, after just 32 games in the Minors and less than a year after the A’s selected him fourth overall in the 2024 MLB Draft out of Wake Forest. In three months, he’s become one of the best hitters in baseball. By wRC+ -- a rate statistic that measures a hitter’s overall offensive value in terms of run creation, with 100 as average -- only Aaron Judge has offered more production.
Highest wRC+ in 2025
Min. 250 PA (230 hitters)
- Aaron Judge (NYY): 208
- Nick Kurtz (ATH): 182
- Ronald Acuña Jr. (ATL): 181
- Cal Raleigh (SEA): 171
- Shohei Ohtani (LAD): 170
Since June 1, Kurtz has a 232 wRC+, which means that he’s been 132 percentage points better than league average offensively. Another way to look at it: The next closest qualifier, Miami’s Kyle Stowers, “only” has a 191 wRC+ in that span.
Already, Kurtz is in rare company. Only Joe DiMaggio recorded more extra-base hits through his first 66 career games -- 48 to Kurtz's 43. In a recent 51-game span, Kurtz hit 23 home runs. Just two players -- Judge and Raleigh -- have hit more home runs in a 51-game span at any point in the last two seasons.
“You can’t say enough good things about Nick,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said last week.
But how is he actually doing all this?
Well, for one, Kurtz is every bit of his 6-foot-5, 240-pound frame, which is quite helpful when it comes to hitting the ball hard. Sure enough, Kurtz has the third-highest barrel rate (21.3%) and eighth-highest hard-hit rate (54.9%) among qualified hitters. With exceptional strength often comes elite bat speed, and just four players (min. 200 swings) swing harder than Kurtz. Only Giancarlo Stanton has a higher fast-swing rate, meaning that Kurtz rarely gets cheated off of his “A swing.”
“If I’m putting the ball in play and hitting the ball hard, that’s all that really matters,” Kurtz said last month at Yankee Stadium.
You can probably tell where this is going. Kurtz hits the ball harder and swings the bat faster than nearly everyone, and he also hits the ball in the air at a rate (65.9%) well above league average. The power output has been historic: He’s slugging .676 this season with a 1.012 SLG in July. No one has slugged over 1.000 in a calendar month (min. 65 PA) since Barry Bonds in August 2004.
Here’s where things get a little weird. We know that the easiest way to slug is to pull the ball in the air. And yet, Kurtz has a pulled airball rate of 15.2%, which is well below league average. That’s by design -- just look at the symmetrical distribution of his batted balls.
“I don’t ever really try to pull the ball,” Kurtz said. “I try to stay in and use left-center field. If I’m a little bit early, I’ll pull it. If I’m a little bit late, it’ll go down the line in left field. For me, it’s all timing-based. If I try to make it timing-based when I pull the ball, a lot of the swing goes out of whack.”
When Kurtz talks about timing, he’s talking about his intercept point -- the point where bat meets ball, expressed in terms of inches in front of a player’s center of mass (towards the mound). Unlike pull hitters, who aim to catch the ball out in front of their own body, Kurtz lets the ball travel deeper. His intercept point (25.5 inches) is far deeper than that of the average hitter (30.7 in.), and one of the deepest intercept points among hitters with at least 200 swings this season.
“I want to look at where I’m hitting the ball,” Kurtz said, explaining his hitting process. “Is it off my front foot? Is it a little too deep? Am I out in front?”
Hitters with power to all fields, like Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani, tend to have deep intercept points relative to their center of mass. These days, no one has more prolific opposite-field power than Kurtz.
He has a 1.073 SLG on non-pulled batted balls, flirting with the single-season record for highest SLG on non-pulled batted balls in the Statcast Era (since 2015).
Highest SLG on non-pulled balls in a single season, Statcast Era
Min. 50 non-pulled batted balls (asterisk denotes ongoing season)
- Aaron Judge (2025): 1.097
- Nick Kurtz (2025): 1.073
- Ronald Acuña Jr. (2020): 1.053
- Luke Voit (2018): 1.050
- J.D. Martinez (2017): .980
“There’s only a few guys in the game that can hit oppo homers and know, when you got it, you got it, which he did,” Kotsay said last week. “It’s like Barry Bonds and Jim Thome and a couple Hall of Famers.”
Everything works in harmony here. Kurtz is disciplined enough to let the ball travel deeper. Because of his bat speed, he can wait on the ball and still get the barrel around without casting his hands, a luxury few have.
“Then I look at the ball backspinning in the air,” Kurtz continued. “Am I staying inside the baseball? Those things, to me, when I’m going well, I’m doing that every single swing. Along with that comes the bat speed, because I’m forcing myself to get inside the baseball, so I’ve got to be a little quicker to get there.”
That’s a lot of hitter jargon, but in practice, it means that Kurtz can swat pitches like this over the left-field fence.
“When you’re staying inside the baseball, you’re staying connected the majority of the time,” A’s director of hitting Darren Bush told MLB.com A’s beat reporter Martín Gallegos. “And when you’re staying connected, you’re maximizing your power.”
Take a look at the pitch location of Kurtz’s extra-base hits -- non-pulled variety -- this season. He’s not just going the other way with pitches on the outer half of the plate. He can send anything the other way, with power.
The other thing that stands out? Almost all of those pitches are in the strike zone. For a slugging rookie, Kurtz is impressively selective. His chase rate is in the 81st percentile, and he has a higher zone rate than the average hitter.
“You can have elite bat speed and not be able to hit the ball,” Bush said. “He has very good hand-eye coordination and will whip it, and that bat speed is going to create high exit velo. But the most important factor is being able to be accurate. Being able to wait for a good pitch. That, to me, is what has given him the ability to be successful.”
That doesn’t sound like an approach a 22-year-old would have, and that’s the other part of this: It’s easy to forget that Kurtz hasn’t even played a full season of professional baseball. Among hitters to debut this season, Kurtz leads the way with a 182 wRC+. The next closest is Miami’s Heriberto Hernandez, who has a 148 wRC+. Only 18 of 47 rookies with at least 100 PA are even average or better.
Looking at recent history, in the past 25 years, Yordan Alvarez (177) owns the highest wRC+ for a rookie in that span. Kurtz has a legitimate chance to eclipse that mark, and he’s bearing down on other records, too.
Highest single-season SLG by a rookie in AL/NL history, since 1901
Min. 200 PA (asterisk denotes ongoing season)
1. Nick Kurtz (2025): .676
2. Gary Sánchez (2016): .657
3. Willie McCovey (1959): .656
4. Yordan Alvarez (2019): .655
5-T. Matt Olson (2017): .651
5-T. Rudy York (1937): .651
What he’s doing is simply historic.