Do Yankees have a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in their pipeline?

Along with all the marveling about Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s three-homer game at Yankee Stadium from Wednesday probably came a thought shared by Yankees fans:

“Why can’t we have a guy like that?”

By “a guy like that,” they mean a superstar player who lights up the ballpark with his talent at a precociously young age.

Guerrero’s 14-total base feat (he also doubled) was still the talk of Yankee Stadium before Thursday night’s series finale. When other baseball people can’t stop throwing around the superlatives, you know a special talent did something amazing.

“A great performance,” said Aaron Boone, “by a great hitter.”

Guerrero is 23. Last season, he hit 48 home runs, which is the most in baseball history by a player 22 or younger.  

Guerrero, the son of the Hall of Famer, signed with the Blue Jays for $3.9 million  as a 16-year-old. He was born in Montreal, but as a resident of the Dominican Republic, Guerrero Jr. was not subject to the MLB draft. The Blue Jays used their entire allotted international bonus money that year to sign him.

"Those kind of guys don't come across very often," Blue Jays special assistant of Latin American operations Ismael Cruz said at the time, according to MLB.com. "So it was either play all of your marbles on one guy or it was go out and get a couple of players that are fine, but for us, Vladimir is a difference-maker. He has the potential to be a very, very special kid."

Guerrero reached the majors as a 20-year-old in 2019. He is akin to generational talents such as Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr. and Juan Soto, who came up to the bigs and excelled at a time when most young players are in the low minors.

That’s why Yankees fans can’t compare their best player, Aaron Judge, to Guerrero. Judge came up in 2016 and didn’t make his mark until his Rookie of the Year season of 2017, when he was 25.  

And that’s why Judge is only hitting his free-agent season when he is approaching 30 (he’ll be blowing out that many candles on April 26). Judge’s age is one of the reasons he and the Yankees seem to be about $100 million apart when it comes to determining his value on a contract extension.

Since Derek Jeter won Rookie of the Year as a 22-year-old in 1996, the Yankees have not had a player come up that young and put together a transcendent career. Which isn’t a knock – those kinds of careers are very rare, which is what makes players such as Guerrero and nights such as Wednesday so special.

One player the Yankees hope could one day be added to that list is outfielder Jasson Dominguez, aka “The Martian,” who the team signed for a $5.1-million bonus as a 16-year-old in 2019.

Dominquez, now 19, lost precious development time to the pandemic and didn’t make his professional debut until 2021, when he hit .252 with five home runs in 56 games at two levels.  

Dominguez started this season at Low-A Tampa. Going into Wednesday, he had five hits in 22 at-bats (.227) in five games. It will likely be a few years before Dominguez will knock on the doors at Yankee Stadium.  

The other great hope of Yankees fans is their No. 1 prospect Anthony Volpe, the 20-year-old shortstop for Double-A Somerset.

Volpe, who also lost a year of development to COVID-19 as there were no minor-league games in 2020, conquered Single-A in 2021, hitting .294 with 27 HRs and a 1.027 OPS for two teams.  

This year, he was off to a slow start at Double-A, having gone 3-for-20 (.150) in his first five games.  

The Yankees are hoping Volpe can progress enough to be a factor on the big-league team in 2023, which is why they passed on the best free-agent shortstop class in baseball history – chock full of top-notch talent – and instead traded for stop-gap Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who has struggled in the season’s first week.

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.