So far, Soler . . . so good.
It has been almost three years, nearly three hundred losses, and three drafts since the Cubs hired Theo Epstein to save the Cubs from their sins and rescue them from eternal damnation in their permanent subterranean dwelling in the Central Division’s fiery core. And if you think that metaphor is overblown and ridiculous, it was meant to match the expectations of Cubs fans, myself included. Yes, it’s been three years. Three. Long. Years. But the rise of Baez and Soler should remind us both how far the Cubs have come and how quickly they have gotten here.
Yes. I said quickly.
Going the better part of three seasons without seeing many seeds of minor league hope sprout into major league promise has not been the most enjoyable (or watchable) process, but it was so much fun to see Javier Baez make his major league debut a few short weeks ago. Watching him hit two home runs in his third game may have seemed like a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, but it wasn’t even a once-in-a-month phenomenon. Because last night, we saw this.
After his two-homer night in game number three, Soler has eclipsed (SWIDT?) Baez on the hope-o-meter, mostly because he’s on pace to hit eight zillion home runs while striking out three and a half times on his way to seventeen World Series championships. Never mind the fact that the Cubs are going to lose 90 games for the fourth year in a row, this team is going places.
But where is this team? I think we know. I think we remember being here.
When Soler blasted his second Cardinal-killing shot to suburban St. Louis, driving in Baez, the hairs stood up on the back of our collective neck in the same way they did when Kerry Wood struck out the thirteenth or fourteenth Astro back in early May of 1998. (I can hear Ron Santo, somewhere in the ivy-covered portion of heaven, saying, “If he keeps hitting like this, we might BE in the World Series!”) And this parade of power-hitting prospects, with Kris Bryant and Albert Almora still waiting to debut with homers in their first games, brings us to reminisce about the days when Wood, Mark Prior, Carlos Zambrano, and Matt Clement accompanied Greg Maddux on the pitching line of the Cubs Hope Railway.
Those were good times that never led any closer to the promised land than five outs away. The Cubs have never been back. They aren’t in championship-contending territory just yet, but the Cubs are in better shape heading into 2015 than they were before the 2003 season. So this? This right here? The Cubs are in the best position we could have hoped for, really.
Why? Because Theo and the Superfriends are smart. Because these prospects are really good. Because the Cubs lost so very much for so very long, and the front office has capitalized on it in the draft. And before you complain about how long it took, keep in mind that the guy we all freaked out about seeing hack his way through air and baseballs was Jim Hendry’s last first-round pick.
That’s the wake-up call when it comes to the timeline the Epstein regime is on. Baez is a Hendry pick. Soler is an Epstein pick-up off the Cuban market. This rebuild we all knew was coming is just about from scratch, and for what it is? It has been amazingly fast.
So, we have reason to be excited, Cubs fans. Great things are coming (in theory). The excitement is here. The opportunity to assemble a really pretty good team is now (er, this offseason). But we don’t and never really had reason to be impatient. It takes years to develop young talent into anything resembling a productive system. But Epstein and company has done it. And holy crap, it’s fun to watch.