Mark Trumbo, Jean Segura, and Everyone Else Are Chasing the Ghost of Jose Bautista

Three weeks into the 2016 season, and we're chasing Jose Bautista's ghost again. It never takes long.

This is not the Jose Bautista that is presently flipping bats and powderizing baseballs in Toronto, of course—that guy is not a ghost, and is in fact alive and well and owns an OPS over 1.000 for the Blue Jays, thank you very much. It's 2010 Jose Bautista that everyone is after: the guy with all the talent in the world who nevertheless is bouncing around the league in search of an opportunity to realize it.

For everyone but Blue Jays fans and Bautista's agent, that story became a bit less interesting once he turned into a perennial MVP contender. The Guy Who Triumphed seems a bit less interesting every year "triumphed" appears in the past tense. Fans and teams on the hunt alike want the present progressive. We want the Guy Who's Going to Make Good. Jose Bautista before he becomes Jose Bautista. Good luck to all of us on that.

Just by the nature of the business, baseball sees any number of potential journeymen turned superstars every year, to the point where the guys that fill this particular niche have emerged as a special breed. We're looking for guys that are young but not that young, who have been fringe to flat-out replacement-level players in their previous homes, who are on their third or maybe fourth major league organization—being traded as a prospect, as Bautista himself was several times, counts—and who are lighting the world on fire with their new club right off the bat.

To truly complete Bautista's profile, our candidate would have to be a former first-round pick; we won't be that discriminating here, because there's a column to write. At the moment, there are really only two obvious contenders for this very specific crown, one in each league: Mark Trumbo, of the Baltimore Orioles, and Jean Segura, of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Neither is likely to be that guy in the end, but then Bautista wasn't that likely to be, either.

Trumbo came to Baltimore via trade with Seattle, which had got him via trade with Arizona, which had previously acquired him via trade with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The Orioles are Trumbo's third team since 2014, and if he keeps hitting like he is, Baltimore will be the first team he'll play a full season for since then. There's no particular reason for the Orioles to bench him: he's got 19 hits in 54 plate appearances so far this year, five of which are home runs. He also has only two walks, which is pretty standard for Trumbo—slightly low, perhaps, but not remarkably so for a player who'd rather hack than do anything else.

As usual, all of his value still comes from swinging his bat. As hot as he's been at the plate, by no means has Trumbo reinvented himself in the field, where he is as meatish and plodding as ever, no matter where he's plugged in. The Orioles would benefit immensely from him taking over the full-time designated hitter role. Spending some time there hasn't hurt his production so far. That crazy game against the Texas Rangers where he homered twice in one inning and drove in five runs? That was his second game of the season as Baltimore's DH.

Trumbo's taking a 1.093 OPS into the final game of the Orioles' series with Toronto, and while it's very unlikely that Trumbo has somehow unlocked the key to superstar production upon landing in the orange and black, unlikely is the name of the game here. That particular unlocking happens to be precisely what Bautista did when he joined the Blue Jays, so we already know how the story goes. Trumbo has even got an interview with Fangraphs out there explaining the specifics of how he turned his corner.

Segura's story has the same basic structure as Trumbo's—it even starts with the Angels. He played in one game for Los Angeles of Anaheim before being traded to Milwaukee as the centerpiece of the Zack Greinke deal. Like Trumbo, Segura had one promising year surrounded by other middling to disappointing ones: Trumbo represented the Angels in the All-Star Game in 2012, Segura represented the Brewers a year later, and that was about it for both of them. Also like Trumbo, Segura eventually needed another change of scenery or two.

Segura has moved to second base full time for the Diamondbacks—although he recently played shortstop again in an extra-inning pinch—and that, combined with his new environs and perhaps a bit of good luck, has Segura leading the National League in hits so far this season. He's hitting for power, too: a .576 slugging percentage going into Wednesday's action, which compares rather interestingly to his career mark of .367.

Segura's 2014 season was cut short by personal tragedy: he went on the bereavement list after his nine-month-old son died suddenly that July. With a brand new team and a brand new approach, Segura finally has the opportunity to make good on the promise that made him such a highly regarded prospect.

You are now ready for the "to be sure" paragraph.

Let's go a step further than that, actually: none of this will last. Mark Trumbo is a one-dimensional power hitter who has always had problems getting on base and Jean Segura's a light-hitting infielder with no true standout tool. Both guys are unremarkable but entirely acceptable major leaguers, and will likely continue to be so for another couple of years until the spring that comes when they won't be anymore. That's how this usually works.

But that's how it was supposed to work for Jose Bautista, who had a definitively mediocre .240/.329/.395 slash line over his first 1,210 big-league plate appearances. And here Bautista is in 2016, still every bit as good as these two guys, one in Baltimore, one in Arizona, who are having what are, by all rights, the best months of their professional careers. They're not chasing the same ghosts we are, admittedly. Trumbo and Segura likely don't care at all about the romance and the narrative and the smug "I told you so" that comes with picking the next big breakout guy. They're chasing themselves: the ballplayers they could have been, and could perhaps still be if everything goes just as it should. If one, or both, of them has managed to finally catch up, we'll know sooner rather than later. It usually doesn't happen. When it does, it's impossible to miss.