Kris Bryant making strong case for Cubs call-up, but is the brass even listening?
MESA, Ariz. – Kris Bryant, 23 years old, smiled and looked out over the tops of the heads around him. He’d hit two more home runs Saturday afternoon, one of them against Felix Hernandez, was batting .480, had played a capable third base and had all of Chicago Cubs fandom rallying behind him. The spring in which he’d been dared to play himself onto the team was going handsomely.
“You really can’t beat baseball right now,” he said. “The sun is shining and hopefully we win this game. I’m still here and I’m still standing.”
Twenty-five at-bats in, Bryant has eight home runs and 14 RBI. Against the Seattle Mariners, he laid off a nasty one-ball, two-strike fastball from Hernandez and hit the next pitch – a changeup – high onto the left-field berm at Sloan Park. Two innings later, he drew a full-count walk against Hernandez. In the fourth inning, he picked out a fairly lifeless breaking ball from veteran Kevin Correia and hit that on the berm, too.
“I couldn’t be more happy with where I am right now,” he said.
Much as anyone would hate to muddle Bryant’s current view of the world and his place in it, there are complications. The Cubs will save some money and buy themselves another year of control by leaving Bryant behind at the start of the season. It wouldn’t even be two weeks, but those nine games have been blown into a test of who the Cubs really are and what they really value.
The Cubs seem to be saying Bryant’s glove needs work. Bryant’s bat seems to be saying,
Are you kidding?
That Bryant is capable of standing beside third base ought to be good enough for the Cubs. But the conversation will continue and they’re both right (other than the defense ruse). Bryant is good enough to play from day one. If the Cubs can turn nine games today into 162 tomorrow, they absolutely should. They’re just living by somebody else’s rules.
Set all that aside and what remains is a young man, a first-rounder two years ago, a 6-foot-5, 220-pound spectacle of bat speed and power, who is beginning to find his proper game amid the best in the world at it. There’ll be moments – days, weeks, maybe months – otherwise. The air won’t always be as thin and Hernandez won’t always be making a mini-project of his signature changeup. But, given the thin air and pitchers focused elsewhere, Bryant has done precisely what should be done with that – he’s hit.
Whether that means he’ll stand along the line at Wrigley Field and tip his cap in two weeks or come strolling in later in the month is almost beside the point. A month ago, the goal was to hit. To play well. And here he is, by all appearances the Cubs’ third baseman of the future, only right here and right now. He’s let everyone else speculate. He’s let everyone else talk. He went off to hit.
“Uh, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t really want to focus on that. … You kind of let your play speak.”
