The story of Thursday night was Jackie Bradley Jr.’s 29-game hitting streak ending, but the story of Friday night will likely wind up being the MLB career of Julio Urias beginning.
At 19 years old, Urias is set to become the first starting pitcher since Felix Hernandez in 2005 to make their major league debut as a teenager, with Hernandez going on to post a 2.67 ERA over 12 starts that season. If Urias can post 
numbers anywhere close to that, I assume the Dodgers would see that as a successful first year.
But there are some people around the baseball world who are anticipating that Urias could actually post numbers better than those of Hernandez in his first year in the bigs. That’s what makes his debut so exciting and so closely watched.
As the number two prospect in all of baseball, Urias has been on the radar of a number of people for quite some time, and is projected to become the game’s next big superstar. Given, there have been a number of players who were coined as can’t-miss prospects only to fall apart in the majors, but Urias appears to be the real deal.
The last time a teenage starter made their debut with the Dodgers was back in 1980, when Fernando Valenzuela made his debut of what would become a fairly successful major league career. Understandably so, Urias is getting a lot of comparisons to Valenzuela, not only for his age, but also with both of them originally being from Mexico and pitching left-handed.
However, I don’t feel it’s fair to look for Urias to bring anything to Los Angeles like “Fernandomania” was. If that happens, great. But I never like to see a ton of pressure put on a guy’s shoulders to develop into something that’s already happened, especially someone as young as Urias. He is a different guy, and should therefore simply be appreciated for the pitcher he is.
Even so, Urias certainly deserves all the hype he’s getting, as he brings a career 2.63 ERA in the minors (along with a mere 1.10 ERA over seven starts in Triple-A this season) into his debut on Friday night against Jacob deGrom and the Mets, under the bright lights of New York.
Whether or not he gets his career started with a bang right out of the gate, or takes a few starts to settle in, Urias is still expected to become the strong number-two-starter behind Clayton Kershaw in the Dodgers’ rotation. If that happens, the Dodgers look to be in good shape moving forward, currently 4.5 games back of the first-place Giants.
After years of anticipation, the Julio Urias era has officially begun.
The Unbiased MLB Fan 