Domonic Brown: Overnight Sensation

J; Philadelphia Phillies left fielder

has been on a crazy hot hot hitting pace lately, including eight homers in eight games headed into Tuesday. Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

It’s not exactly as if Domonic Brown has gone from being a garage band to the top 40 in one jam session. The Philadelphia Phillies drafted him in 2006 with the idea that some day he would be knocking on the clubhouse door at an All-Star game. Which he is. It’s just that despite the long wait, it seems as if he is an overnight success.

In fact, in Brown’s case, it seems like success came with the turn of the calendar page from April to May and that’s how the numbers read. Brown was the National League Player of the Month for May. He was also the National League Player of the Week for May 20-26. For about six weeks he has been player of the universe.

Regardless of his pedigree and the long-held belief in Philadelphia that Brown would someday be a star for the Phils, even by the end of the 2012 season the average baseball fan didn’t know much of anything about him. Brown played just 56 games in the majors last year. So it’s been a long time coming for the Phillies and Brown, but Brown announced his arrival with skywriting and fireworks over the last several weeks.

The Phils outfielder had 17 home runs and 42 runs batted in to go along with a .291 average entering Tuesday. Monday, Brown hit his eighth home run in eight games. Pretty soon we’ll be seeing charts in newspapers comparing Brown’s pace to Barry Bonds‘ record single-season homer pace. Eight home runs in eight games is a pretty nice streak. You know what Brown said after that was pointed out to him? “I’m not really big on numbers,” he said.

Does that mean he wasn’t good at math in high school? Everyone else in the baseball world is pretty big on numbers, from fans to general managers. Here are a couple of other Brown numbers: In May he hit 12 home runs and drove in 25 runs. That’s worthwhile arithmetic.

Not so very long ago the Phillies won a World Series and were perpetual pennant contenders. Things fell apart very quickly due to injuries, sudden old age, and disappointing play. For the last couple of years Philadelphia has been aching for a fresh face to root for and now it seems as if Brown is the man and that the promise seen in him half a decade ago when he was being selected in the amateur draft is being fulfilled.

Right now Brown is the best player in baseball. How long he can keep up such torrid pace is totally unknown. Has Brown finally become the breakout star his team expected? Is he going to cool off (he pretty much has to), but remain a star? These are exciting times for Brown and for the Phillies. Sometimes young players get smokin’ hotter than the backyard grill, but they do eventually have water doused on them. It’s always fun to watch and experience as long as a hot streak continues. It’s what comes afterwards, when the temporary brilliance has subsided, that counts. Staying power at a high level is sought.

Brown is 6-foot-5 and his weight is listed at 200 pounds, which gives him NBA point guard dimensions. One reason his season’s average is “only” .291 is because he started slow in April and despite knocking the cover of the ball like the Robert Redford character in “The Natural” he had a ways to go to raise it to above average.

But at the moment Brown is playing so far above average they don’t have report-card grades that cover his performance.