Christopher Morel homered again yesterday, his 8th homer in 11 games, and it was the only good thing about yesterday outside of Justin Steele. Just as he does so often between pitches, Morel’s streak has provided us an opportunity for a big exhale. Sometimes I just need to take a breath.
So let’s do some Morel Bullets for smile-making and breath-taking …
- Morel’s latest homer was off of old friend Craig Kimbrel, and kept the Cubs’ hopes, briefly, alive yesterday. It also brought him into some more historic company:
- Side note: pretty sure Aristides Aquino hit every single one of those eight homers against the Cubs. Felt like it, anyway. (OK fine, I just checked: it was five of them.)
- Yesterday’s game, in which Christopher Morel homered, actually brought his wRC+ *DOWN* from 262 to 259. Lol.
- Morel’s 8th big league homer gives him a total 19 on the year in just 40 games between Triple-A and MLB, still the most in baseball.
- The home run also kept alive Morel’s streak of having a hit and scoring a run in all 11 games he’s played for the Cubs so far this season. (He also has at least one strikeout in every game, but that’s less fun and this post is supposed to be fun.)
- Morel’s combined big league and minor league slash line is just comical:
- Maybe the most comical part is that it’s his big league numbers PULLING UP that combined slash line, not the other way around!
- How’s this for fun? Even though he’s played just 11 MLB games this season, he’s now 37th in homers, tied with Freddie Freeman, Juan Soto, Willy Adames, Teoscar Hernรกndez, among others.
- And:
- Eventually, the aggressiveness will cause Morel more problems than it provides opportunities, but the Cubs don’t entirely want to coach it out of him. โChristopher is far from a finished product when it comes to plate discipline and what he understands that he can handle,โ hitting coach Dustin Kelly said, per the Tribune. โWeโre never going to take the aggressiveness away from him. You have to live with the swing and miss for him. โฆ As he gets more comfortable, heโs going to get better and better at eliminating pitches.โ
- All of that is good and will be necessary, but in the meantime, it’s pretty fun to notice the diversity of pitch types and locations off of which he’s gone deep during this streak: