Just About Five Years From MLB’s Linsanity Run: What Happened to Yermín Mercedes?

Written By GW SBA

Yermín Mercedes had all the characteristics of an MLB mainstay: starter on a competitive team, AL Rookie of the Month, and a killer nickname, The Yerminator. Although he was at one time a league sensation, he only played a century of games in the bigs. This is the story of how a COVID baseball superstar ruined his career just as quickly as he made his mark. 

Mercedes’ climb to the major leagues was long and tedious, unlike his spectacular rise. Originally from the Dominican Republic, he signed with the Washington Nationals as an international free agent in March 2011. In 2012 and 2013 respectively, his batting-average/on-base%/slugging% “slash line” was .313/.379/.397 and .255/.359/.439 for the Nationals Dominican Summer League team. In August of 2013, he was then released from the Nationals.

All was not lost, however. Mercedes had a monstrous comeback season for three teams in the independent Pecos League. Playing for teams in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, Mercedes slashed .380/.420/.699 and was subsequently acquired by another DMV team in the Baltimore Orioles. After three solid years in the Orioles farm system, he was acquired by the White Sox in the 2017 minor league rule 5 draft, and his stock skyrocketed from there. 

In 2018, he spent the entire year with the Winston-Salem Dash, the White Sox High-A affiliate, where he hit 14 home runs and had a .289 average. It was in 2019, however, when he really broke out in the minor leagues. For the Double-A Birmingham Barons (the same team that Michael Jordan played for), Mercedes hit .327 with 19 home runs and 40 RBIs. After only 42 games, he was called up to the AAA Charlotte Knights, where he continued a great season, with 35 home runs and an on-base plus slugging percentage of 1.033. 

After years and years of toiling through minor leagues, Mercedes was finally promoted to the 40-man roster on November 21, 2019, in expectation that he would get some playing time during the 2020 season. Obviously, in 2020, the whole world shut down (and so did the minor leagues), but Yermín did get one at-bat in the majors, a ground out to the Royals’ Whit Merrifield. 

Mercedes came back to the White Sox in 2021 with higher hopes, as the MLB was set to play a full 162 games. During 2021 Spring Training, Mercedes knew he had to play his best baseball to earn an opening day spot this time around, batting .277 against major league pitching. He officially was on a major league roster for the first time in advance of the season, as he joined veteran Yasmani Grandal and Zack Collins, impressively beating out the much more experienced Jonathan Lucroy. 

Mercedes got off to a fast start to his major league career. In game 2 of the season at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, Mercedes recorded a hit in all of his first five at-bats, the first player to do so in the modern era. In that April 2 game, he also recorded four RBIs, as the White Sox routed the Angels 12-8.

He then kept up the hit streak in his next at-bat. And the next at-bat. And the one after. Mercedes started an historic eight for eight, an unheard of record for a league newcomer. The streak included his first career home run during that April 3 game, but it would unfortunately come to a close in his ninth at-bat. In the eighth inning, he flew out to centerfield to end the streak, but his bat was still scalding hot. 

Through ten games of the MLB season, Mercedes was hitting a whopping .500 with a 1.363 OPS. He had a hit in every game but two, and struck out only three times in those first ten games. He also managed three walks in his seventh game, proving that although he was only a couple of games into his career, pitchers already wanted to throw around him. 

On April 19, during the Red Sox annual Marathon Monday 11:00 AM game, Mercedes finally made his debut in the field, after having been designated hitter for every game prior. However, his position on the field was the mound. “Photoshop’s a marvelous thing, but we wouldn’t dare do that to you,” quipped White Sox commentator Jason Benetti about seeing Yermín on the mound. Having to play their fourth game in under 72 hours, the White Sox ran out of relievers after the 6th, and it was their star rookie who they turned to. 

Mercedes happened to have pitching experience before, but it was three appearances for the White Sands Pupfish in the aforementioned Pecos League. With his hat tilted off to the side, he zipped balls in the opposite direction to what he was used to at speeds around 80 mph, with his fastball topping out at 88. Though he was able to get a lucky double-play ball hit straight to Tim Anderson, he allowed three straight hits, before ending the inning on a Christian Vazquez fly-out, only allowing one run on 31 pitches. With his pitching appearance, he became the first position player to make his debut in the field at pitcher since 1943.  

Yermín’s Linsansity moment was not only on the field, but off the field through Chicago as well. Fans started wearing shirts with his newly-christened nickname, “the Yermínator”, on it, inspired by the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. The nickname also spawned a burger with the same name at the restaurant Fabulous Freddies, located a mile away from the Sox Guaranteed Rate Field. The burger was a classic Dominican Chimichurri burger, inspired by flavors of Mercedes’ home country. The night it was announced, Mercedes had four hits in a win against the Rangers.

The White Sox were the hot new upstart team that season, led by Manager Tony La Russa, as well as players Jose Abreu, Tim Anderson and Luis Robert Jr. They finished April with a 14-11 record, and it was Mercedes who was an essential part of their success. He finished the month second in the league in average, fourth in on-base percentage, and fifth in OPS. These numbers were good enough to earn him runaway rookie-of-the-month honors. 

Mercedes had cooled down just a little bit by mid May. In the first two weeks of May, his average went from .415 to .358. Although he was baseball’s big upstart, it was at this point of the season that he saw his first sign of controversy. In the ninth inning, with the Twins down 15-4 in the top of the ninth, Minnesota subbed in their cult hero utilityman Willians “La Tortuga” Astudillo at pitcher. What would happen next would begin the decline of this story’s hero. 

After Astudillo quickly recorded two outs to start the inning, he unfortunately threw Mercedes three straight balls. The White Sox DH was given the take sign to lay off the next pitch. Instead, Yermín swung away as hard as he could at the 47 mph pitch and sent it 429 feet to center field. He rounded the bases with a smirk, but his old-school manager La Russa was not too happy and said in his postgame press conference that it wouldn’t happen again.

From that point forward, the baseball gods would taketh away just as fast as they had giveth. Opposing pitchers were starting to figure out the White Sox rookie as his novelty was starting to wear off. He started to struggle against hard fastballs and his average plummeted. In May, his average was .221 and in June, it was an abysmal .159 with an OPS of .190. 

On June 21 of 2021, disaster struck as Yermín Mercedes was sent back down to the minor leagues for the first time since his meteoric rise. He didn’t take the news well. That night he posted a black screen on his Instagram with just the text “it’s over.” Mercedes announced he was taking time away from baseball for an extended period, and many people took that to mean that he was retiring for good. 

Then on June 22, everything changed once again. Mercedes was officially listed on the active roster of the Triple-A Charlotte Knights. Not long after, our main character hopped on social media once again. This time, it was a picture of a phoenix rising from the ashes with the caption “Yo Nunca Me Voy a Rendir”, which translates to “I will never give up”. Mercedes was back, officially a baseball player once again. 

In his time with the Knights, he slashed almost the exact same numbers as in the majors, and batted .275 in 68 games in AAA. Within the next year, he played in the Dominican Winter League, and eventually came back with Charlotte in 2022 after recovering from a hamate bone fracture. He was DFA’d from the White Sox on June 12 of that year and was picked up by the Giants on June 18. 

His time with the Giants was uninspiring. Despite a few good moments like a RBI double and home run vs. the Diamondbacks, and a hit by pitch to score on a Mike Yastrzemski grand slam vs. the Brewers, Mercedes had a negative WAR with San Francisco and was optioned to the minors. This time his demotion caused less controversy, but Yermín had his 100th and final at-bat in the major leagues. 

In 2023, he signed for a team in the Mexican League, but had an embarrassing statline of 21 strikeouts in 20 games and was released in May of that year. Mercedes also played for teams like Saraperos de Saltillo in the Mexican League and Centauros de La Guaira of the Venezuelan League. There is no news now as to what is up with our friend Yermín and what his next career move will be. 

Yermín Mercedes’ career sounds like the kind of made-up story a relative would tell you about his time as a professional athlete. But for one man, that tall tale was the life he lived, and no player lived out the absolute highest of highs and lowest of lows quite the way that Yermín Mercedes did. 




Sources:

GW SBA
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