Yes, sources are saying.
I’m not a big Superman guy and I’m not a James Gunn completist but as a fan of several Marvel movies and a person intrigued by the new movie I went to see it recently and… could’ve done without the proton river cgi slop part but otherwise quite good, duh. Cast was indeed A+, especially Rachel Brosnahan as Lois, which: correct. Do things like this more ofte.
But the thing I want to talk about is the Kaiju. And Roman Anthony. Who is the Kaiju. If you haven’t seen and/or care about spoilers stop literally right now, because in the movie, the Kaiju is unleashed on Metropolis as an infant child at dusk early in the second act, only to emerge Godzilla-sized and aggravated the next morning. Understandable tbh. Eventually the Kaiju is captured and killed (against Superbutt’s principles) but the point is that they grew so unusually fast, and so powerfully, that they deserved to be studied. Roman Anthony, who’s just a baseball player, evokes the Kaiju. Good for us, he’s very much alive.
He’s also all of 21 years old, and controls the strike zone better than anyone else on the team, hence his position in the leadoff spot, which was an inspired choice. If I’ve seen late-career Frank Thomas bad leadoff — or so I thought I had until looking it up and seeing he batted leadoff for exactly one game, in which he went 2-2 with a homer, so, like, he really didn’t; I’m also not admitting I was suffering an AI-like hallucination, but I’m also not saying I’m wrong. Facts are facts. Also, I forgot this was a parenthetical. So to get back to it all — if I’ve seen Frank Thomas bat leadoff, which I probably haven’t but just go with it, Anthony is a great choice to do it, especially as he grows into his game power.
To that end, it’s instructive to note how Jarren Duran has been swapped with Anthony in the batting order, and emphasizes the importance of sustained growth over, or equal to, the importance of filling roles. You’d expect Duran to bat leadoff. Right now, the power he showed last night — hitting the ball 7,239 feet or whatever — is what we need most, and Anthony’s presence atop a lineup whose bottom has some frisky at-bats gives him the flexibility to adapt to whether he’s coming or going, all while getting him valuable reps.
Growth isn’t linear, and there’s a far higher than average chance, mathematically speaking, that Roman Anthony isn’t among the 1% of guys who Know the Zone. But it sure looks like he is to this point. I’m not saying he’s Superman, if only because we know his weakness. We’re still waiting on Roman’s. Maybe cheese on fish? Breaking spaghetti in half? France? The mind reels. But there’s a better question: What, except for a plucky group of wisecracking second-tier superheroes in a dead zone in a Superman movie, stops a Kaiju? And how scared should the Yankees be?