NEWSLETTER
Willson Contreras went through a mild slump earlier this month for about a week, but given how well Contreras is seeing the ball and squaring it up this year, the slump didn’t last. He’s now on a six-game hitting streak, including last night’s eight total bases from two doubles and a homer.
That home run actually wound up being the 600th hit of Contreras’s career, all with the Chicago Cubs:
After the game, the expected All-Star starter spoke with Taylor McGregor about the night, where she revealed that he’d reached 600 hits. He had no idea that milestone was even coming.
His reaction was genuine and lovely, and included a bit of heart-tugging, since we know what’s likely coming:
Contreras was appreciative of being able to reach 600 hits with the Cubs, and said he hopes he can get to 2,000 with the team. The kind of nice sentiment that I want to linger on a bit, rather than immediately doing the math on how many hits he could ACTUALLY accumulate before the August 2 Trade Deadline.
The whole thing is a sweet, but sad, reminder of how much Contreras has meant to the Cubs, how good he’s been with the team, and how enjoyable it is to see him just reacting in the moment to things – whether it’s a runner taking a step too far off first base or finding out he had a really big night.
We all know what’s most likely to happen in the weeks ahead. Contreras is going to keep raking, he’s going to play in the All-Star Game, and if he stays healthy, the Cubs are going to trade him by the deadline. It’s an outcome that has been pre-ordained for as long as Contreras went unextended several years ago, for as long as the Cubs seemed determined to move on entirely from anyone who was part of the previous “core,” and certainly for as long as it became clear that the 2022 Cubs weren’t winning anything.
For at least one more night, though, Willson Contreras’s presence on the Cubs was a very enjoyable thing.
