The first month of the season has brought a return to competition to a few teams that were bottom feeders for a while. The Pirates are back, the Orioles are back, the Diamondbacks are back...and the Chicago Cubs are good again. Baseball's just a little bit more fun whenever the Cubs are good.
Not only are these 2023 Cubs pretty good right now, but they're good in a way that the last, Maddon-led incarnation of this franchise wasn't. These Cubs are, like, weird-good. Like, they had Yan Gomes hitting over .300 for a while. Do you have any idea how hard that is to do? Yan Gomes usually bats .230. This is big for him. Yes, it's big in general that a 35-year-old catcher has been such a success starting for the Cubs the year after they let Willson Contreras go, but it's only natural for Gomes to ascend to startership, as he has in Cleveland, Washington and Oakland.
You know what else is weird. Patrick Wisdom has 11 home runs and nobody's talking about it. I mean, some people are talking about it, but I hear more about Pete Alonso in terms of conversations about people hitting a lot of home runs right now. But yeah, Wisdom has 11 homers and his time as a relevant MLB figure isn't over. Neither is Cody Bellinger's, as somehow, by some odd means, he's figured out how to properly play baseball again. Maybe having a kid helped, who knows. But he's hitting .303 with 18 RBIs and 7 home runs, as well as a 1.7 WAR, which I think was his cumulative WAR from the last 2 seasons.
It also baffles me that Nico Hoerner, who struggled in an initial full season with Chicago, mainly because it wasn't Iowa like the plan was supposed to be, has become the centerpiece of this team. He's excellent defensively, is hitting .310 with 17 RBIs, and by 26 has come into his own with the Cubs. Having people like Hoerner, Wisdom, Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki come into their own as this team becomes competitive is really lucky. Of course, having the money to get people like Dansby Swanson and Jameson Taillon to come aboard and start playing well also helps a great deal.
The Cubs currently have several big pieces, including Hoerner, Swanson, Marcus Stroman, Justin Steele, Bellinger and Wisdom, playing extremely well and keeping the team secure and confident. It is a competitive stretch that has been a bit lost thanks to similar stretches by Milwaukee and Pittsburgh, but I do think this Cubs team has legs, and their core suddenly coming together like this makes me confident that they can get a lot done this year.
Coming Tonight: Surprisingly he was not traded for Sean Murphy, but he's certainly filling in for him right now.
Justin Steele has been real good. The Cubs have gotten a lot of heat over their catching situation but they have been stressing defense and pitcher management over offense. And it looks like Matt Mervis will be called up tomorrow!
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