It’s not that no one saw Kirk coming, exactly. He is unusual enough, in enough ways, that he’s been hard to miss from the moment he signed with Toronto.
Scout Aaron Acosta had tried to sign Kirk after seeing him play as a teenager in Tijuana, first failing to convince the Rays to do so and then making Kirk his first signing after moving on to the Jays.
Last year, Lansing Lugnuts broadcaster Jesse Goldberg-Strassler asked Acosta how good Kirk could be. “Oh, oh my god,” Acosta said.
He noted that Kirk won the triple crown in the Mexican Academic League, but said that what really popped for him was that
Kirk also stole 20 bases. “And this kid,
he is not fast,” Acosta said. In the second game of Lansing’s season last year, Kirk stole home.