NEWSLETTER
Because of the really bad quad injury, we haven’t had a chance to see much of Michael Hermosillo this year. The 2021 Triple-A breakout came to Spring Training with a real shot at being the primary 4th outfielder on the team – with some potential to win more starts from there – but he was almost immediately hurt, and only just came back recently.
Which is to say, we haven’t had much time to get to see him do things like he did in the bottom of the 9th last night, making this INCREDIBLE catch:
In the immediate aftermath of the catch, all I could think about was: oh dear god please let Seiya Suzuki be OK. The collision didn’t look THAT bad, but Suzuki looked like his face may have taken an arm, and this was JUST AFTER he’d been hit on the left hand/wrist by a 94 mph fastball for which he would later get X-rays (results still pending an announcement). So I was TENSE. Hopefully there are no issues there.
Now that we have a little more clearance, I just want to remark what a fantastic catch that was. Look again and see how long Hermosillo had to track that one, and then time the leap at the wall to pull it down. That’s some exceptional center field work, and a reminder of what COULD have been out there defensively if not for the injury.
Because of that defense, and because of his theoretical ability to rake against lefties, I think Hermosillo is going to be a tough 40-man decision once again this year. The Cubs may try once again to de-roster him and then sign him to a minor league deal. I’m not sure he’d get a 40-man roster offer anywhere else because of the mostly lost season, but he may prefer his chances of a big league job in Spring Training with another organization that doesn’t have so many edge case outfielders at the Triple-A/MLB level. I really hope the Cubs can retain him, though, because I still feel like we really haven’t gotten a chance to see what he can do. I think there’s a very useful bench player there.
