When Patrick Wisdom homered in the series finale against the Dodgers on Sunday, that felt like a pretty special thing. Three days in a row with a homer? That’s awesome stuff, and is highly likely to stick in your memory bank.
So when Wisdom homered again last night to make it FOUR games in a row, it felt like we were getting into “Hey, who else but Sammy Sosa has done that in Cubs history?” territory.
And just as you could start to ponder such things – did Sammy do it four games in a row? certainly he did, right? – Wisdom went deep again.
That’s five home runs in a four-game stretch, which has to be among the few times that’s happened in Cubs history.
I couldn’t find the precise numbers for the whole franchise, but I did want to see what Sammy Sosa was doing in that famed June of 1998 when he hit a record 20(!) homers in the month. For one thing, Sosa did have a five-game stretch where he homered in each of the games, so there’s your next target, Patrick. Sosa also hit five in a three-game stretch at one point, so he’s got Wisdom there. Should probably just go out and homer three times tonight.
One bit of history on Wisdom’s start to the season:
At 8 homers, Wisdom is tied with Pete Alonso for the MLB lead. Though it’s worth pointing out that Alonso has had 18 more plate appearances already.
It’s no surprise, then, that Wisdom’s .500 ISO (lol) leads MLB by a country mile. His 192 wRC+ is 8th best in the game. Although I wouldn’t bet on him to keep up THIS pace, I would remind folks that Wisdom’s contact quality from day one with the Cubs was among the very best in baseball. It’s just that he was never making enough of that contact to put his total results in that top tier of offensive performance.
To that point, right now, Wisdom’s strikeout rate – 31.6% – looks outstanding. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a bottom 20 mark in the league among qualifiers, but with his contact quality, that strikeout rate will play. He would be a stud, frankly.
Can he actually keep this up? Well, I think part of the answer there will come down to whether the Cubs and David Ross can do a good job of making sure Wisdom appears in the right match-ups. So far, Wisdom has sat out just one game, so it’s not as if he’s been match-up protected (i.e., against righties will stellar elevated fastballs). Maybe that’s just been a product of who the Cubs have been facing, or maybe Wisdom has made some tweaks to better connect in the upper third of the zone. The samples are so tiny right now that I don’t want to mislead in either direction, but suffice to say, this is the stuff worth monitoring over the next few weeks.
Well, and also if he keeps hitting the crap out of the ball. That’d probably be a good signal, too.