Wilson Ramos replaces Joe Mauer and makes some history with four-hit debut

Joe Mauer is out for at least a few days with a heel injury, so the Twins called up 22-year-old prospect Wilson Ramos from Triple-A and he went 4-for-5 against the Indians yesterday in his big-league debut. Ramos ranked No. 3 on my list of the Twins’ top prospects heading into the season, but was hitting just .179 with a poor 15/3 K/BB ratio in 16 games at Triple-A prior to the call-up. That makes his 4-for-5 debut pretty surprising, but even more amazing is that he’s the first player in 12 years to have a four-hit debut. Better yet, I’m guessing 99.9 percent of baseball fans couldn’t name the last guy to do it. I certainly couldn’t, at least not before diving into Baseball-Reference.com for the answer. Go ahead, take your best guess. OK, ready? The answer is ... Derrick Gibson. Exactly. Gibson made his big-league debut for the Rockies on September 8, 1998 and went 4-for-4 in an 11-10 win over the Marlins. At the time he was only 23 years old, but Gibson played a grand total of just 16 more games in the majors, going 10-for-45 (.222), and was finished as a big leaguer the next season. He went on to spend 14 seasons in the minors before retiring in 2006. Along with Ramos and Gibson, the other four-hit debuts belong to: Delino DeShields, Bill Bean, Kirby Puckett, Ted Cox, Mack Jones, Willie McCovey, Spook Jacobs, Cecil Travis, Russ Van Atta, Art Shires. That’s a pretty mixed bag, because for every star like Puckett, McCovey, and Travis there’s a Gibson, Bean, Cox, and Jacobs who essentially did nothing in the majors after their big debut.