This is the most unlikely star of the season

There have been unlikely stars in this baseball season because there are always unlikely stars. It is one of the enduring beauties of the game, the guy who seems to come out of nowhere and put his name in lights. This season there is no more unlikely star than Gio Urshela of the Yankees, who might end up as the American League batting champion if he can get enough plate appearances over his team’s last 28 games.

His teammate, DJ LeMahieu, is another guy who’s contending for the batting title. LeMahieu already won one, in the National League, with the Rockies three years ago. Urshela? He hit .225 with the Indians when he was a rookie, in 81 games. The next year he hit .224 in 67 games and last year, in just 19 games with the Blue Jays, he hit .233. After Tuesday night’s Yankee victory over the Mariners, Urshela was hitting .330, with 18 home runs and 67 RBIs. The 27-year-old has been one of the most valuable Yankees in what has been a magical season for them so far, one in which they’ve seen more than two dozen guys go to the injured list and still came out of Tuesday night tied for the best record in baseball and a half-game ahead of the Astros for the best record in the American League.

Because of the position he plays, Urshela now makes you remember another third baseman in perhaps the most magical Yankee season of them all. In 1997, Scott Brosius had hit .203 for the A’s. The Yankees traded for Brosius, and he hit .300 as the Yankees were winning 114 regular season games in '98 and 125 in all. Brosius ended up MVP of the World Series. But Brosius had some solid years in Oakland. Nobody ever saw this coming with Urshela. Certainly not the New York Yankees.

Brian Cashman, still working for Bob Watson in the late '90s, was dealing with the younger general managers in those days. One of them was a kid named Billy Beane in Oakland. So Cashman was in the middle of the deal for Brosius, who played third for the Yankees as they won the World Series in ’98 and ’99 and 2000 and nearly won another won in '01.

Cashman was talking about Urshela on Tuesday, somebody he thought was going to be a “backup alternative insurance policy” at third base when the Yankees got him from the Blue Jays for cash last year -- a time when Urshela was two months away from being out of options.

“We saw some upside with him,” Cashman said. “We’d tried to get him a couple of times from the Indians. We tried to get him included in the Andrew Miller trade [in 2016]. But did we see this coming?” Cashman laughed. “Nobody saw this.”

Cashman paused and said, “He’s been spectacular. A star.” Cashman paused again and said, “He’s played like Manny.”

Cashman was talking about Manny Machado, somebody an awful lot of Yankee fans wanted their team to sign as a free agent when Machado was on the market last winter, before he ended up in San Diego for $300 million. Machado has 27 home runs for the Padres this season, 74 RBIs and an OPS of .806. Urshela's OPS is .924. And his batting average, so far, is 66 points higher than Machado’s. Everybody knows what Machado can do in the field. But Yankee fans know how brilliant Urshela has been at third base. If he can get enough plate appearances -- Cashman is afraid he’s going to fall short -- he and LeMahieu (and Michael Brantley) could go down the stretch for a batting title -- all the way to the last day of the season -- the way Yankee teammates Don Mattingly and Dave Winfield did in 1984.

I’d started the conversation with Cashman by asking if he or somebody else in his operation liked Urshela more than everybody else did.

“All of us, and that includes the analytics people and our pro scouting guys, were in agreement about his fielding,” Cashman said. “We’d all seen him make these great plays at third base. And we really had wanted him for a few years. And we had tried to get him. But I’ll say it again: Not one of us saw this. I mean, he played third base for the Indians against us in that [2017] Division Series. All five games. He hit .167. Now look at all the time he’s spent in the middle of our order this season.”

Brosius isn’t the only unlikely Yankee star Cashman has seen in his time in the team’s front office. Shane Spencer came out of the Minor Leagues and hit eight home runs in September 1998, including three grand slams. There have been some pitchers who have come out of nowhere. Aaron Small was 10-0 in 2005. That same year the Yankees picked up Shawn Chacon after he was 1-7 in Colorado and he was 7-3 down the stretch and was terrific. But Urshela has been this kind of star all season, really from the time Miguel Andujar was lost for the season. For this one season, they got Manny. Manny’s making $30 million in '19. Gio’s making $555,000.

“Listen,” Cashman continued. “It pays to be good in this business. It always pays to be healthy. But sometimes it pays to be lucky, too. Gio is in the lucky category.”

They thought they were buying an insurance policy. Turned out to be a winning lottery ticket instead.