3 plays that show Lombard's all-around impact for Yanks 

George Lombard Jr. is obviously off to a great start to his MLB career, and even though we don't want to get ahead of ourselves after only five games, the Yankees' top prospect definitely looks like he's going to be able to impact the game with his bat, with his speed and with his glove.

In five games, we've already gotten some nice highlights from the 21-year-old shortstop in each phase of the game. So ahead of Tuesday's series opener against the Mariners at Yankee Stadium, let's take a look at one play from each area -- batting, baserunning and fielding -- that showcases Lombard's exciting tools.

Here are three plays … and some way-too-early stats to go with them … that tell us about Lombard's upside for the Yanks.

1) Batting: The first home run

This is an easy one, but still. Lombard's best swing in the big leagues so far is his first hit, and first home run, in his MLB debut.

That homer was 100.2 mph off the bat, and it was against an 0-2 breaking ball, not exactly the easiest situation to homer in.

Lombard has been pretty good at doing one key thing so far: hitting hard line drives and fly balls. Now, he's only stepped to the plate 20 times, and put 12 balls in play. So we're not making any grand, sweeping statements here, we're just looking for signs that there's life in his bat. Which there are.

Lombard has a 42% hard-hit rate so far, a 42% launch angle sweet-spot rate and a 17% barrel rate. All of those are good things, if he can keep it up.

We also liked his second homer against the Braves the other day, which he smacked to the short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium. That gives him one pulled home run, and one opposite-field home run. We like to see the power to both sides of the field.

2) Baserunning: The infield single to spark a comeback

Lombard is fast. He's the fastest player on the Yankees, in fact.

Lombard only has a handful of competitive runs -- as in, plays where he's had to go full speed -- but his average sprint speed is 29.7 feet per second. That's top-tier speed for a Major Leaguer. The MLB average sprint speed is around 27 ft/sec, and the absolute elite level is 30 ft/sec or faster. Lombard is very close to that.

Take his infield single in the ninth inning against the Braves on Friday, a hit that kick-started a Yankees comeback win over the NL East leaders. Lombard reached a top sprint speed of 29.9 ft/sec on that play -- right on the edge of elite territory -- and his speed forced a wild throw from Atlanta closer Raisel Iglesias that let him get all the way to third.

And we actually know that Lombard has true elite speed in him. We've known since his very first Major League at-bat.

In that first at-bat against the Cardinals, Lombard reached a sprint speed of 30.5 ft/sec trying to beat out a ground ball for what would've been his first career hit. He was just barely thrown out, but that run goes down as a "bolt," which is what Statcast calls an individual run with a sprint speed of 30 ft/sec or faster.

Sprint speed is one of the stats that gives us a true picture of a player's talent the fastest. Lombard's wheels are real.

3) Fielding: The play in the hole to keep it tied in extras

Lombard's been making a lot of slick plays at shortstop, inspiring Aaron Boone to say his young shortstop plays the position "like a puma."

And that was before he made this play. On Friday against the Braves, Lombard showed off his range and arm going deep into the hole at short to take a hit away from Sean Murphy.

Lombard, who started the play holding on the runner at second, had to range 26 feet to his right to track down Murphy's grounder on his backhand. Then he had to make a 133-foot throw back across the diamond to first. Lombard got rid of that throw in just 0.77 seconds, with enough juice on it to reach Luis García Jr. on the fly and get Murphy with ease. Well, "ease."

That play helped keep the game tied in the 10th inning, and set up the Yankees for a walk-off win in the bottom of the inning.

As a bonus play, we also liked this one, where Lombard flashed his puma-like reflexes to rob Cardinals star rookie JJ Wetherholt on a hot shot up the middle.

Lombard didn't have to range so far to field this one, but it was 105.5 mph off the bat, and from when the pitch left Will Warren's hand to when the ball got to Lombard was just 1.7 seconds. Lombard had to make a diving snare on a tough hop, then get up and throw out the speedy Wetherholt from the outfield grass behind second base.

Lombard is eating up balls at shortstop. He's converted 94% of all the balls hit his direction into outs, one of the highest success rates of any fielder since his debut. Most importantly, that conversion rate is 7% over expectation, considering the difficulty of Lombard's opportunities.

That's very, very good. Converting even a small percentage of extra plays into outs over the course of a season can make you one of the most valuable defensive infielders in baseball.