Yankees prospect Peter O'Brien is headed to the big time (eventually)

TRENTON — The weekend has to get better for Thunder power hitter Peter O’Brien, because it certainly didn’t start off very well.

O’Brien was ejected in the top of the first inning of Friday night’s series opener against the Akron RubberDucks. And that was the only game he was scheduled to play this weekend.

Saturday, O’Brien was on a flight to Minnesota for today’s MLB Futures Game. From there, he will fly to Altoona for Wednesday’s Eastern League All-Star Game.

“This is a great opportunity for me,” O’Brien said before he left. “It’s an opportunity to represent the Yankees, the Trenton Thunder and USA baseball. I’m looking forward to it.”

O’Brien, one of five Thunder players in the EL All-Star Game and the only one in the Futures Game, is third in all of Minor League Baseball with 29 home runs. His power at Arm & Hammer Park has already become stuff of legend.

In his first weekend with the Thunder after being called up from Single-A Tampa, he homered three times in two games against the Reading Fightin Phillies, with one leaving the stadium and landing somewhere on Route 29.

More recently, he was coming off a three-homer series against Reading in Reading, Pa., in which the Thunder actually won three out of the four games.
“His power is substantial,” manager Tony Franklin said. “It’s quite impressive.”

A 2012 second-round pick of the Yankees out of the University of Miami, O’Brien is making a name for himself and getting honored accordingly.

“He deserves it,” Franklin said. “The Futures Game is a nice honor for him. It’s quite the honor. He’ll be in a Major League setting, a Major League atmosphere. That’s good. I hope he hits a home run.

“People in baseball know who you are when you have that kind of power. They’ll find you. It’s hard for a guy like that to be overlooked.”

O’Brien has done more than just hit home runs lately. He’s had six multi-hit games in his last 14 and was 5-for-11 in the Reading series after going 7-for-16 a few before against vs. Portland.

Now, he’ll get to go on a bigger stage on his way to what he hopes will eventually be the biggest stage of them all.

“It should be a lot of fun,” O’Brien said. “I’m just going to try to relax and take it all in as much as I can.”

This isn’t the first time O’Brien has played in a big-time atmosphere. In 2010, he played for Team USA in Japan.

“We beat Japan in Japan,” he said. “That was huge. Then we lost to a real good Cuba team, 2-1, in the final.”


(nj.com)