Chicago Cubs: Why everyone should love Javier Baez

1. He’s really good at baseball (duh)

All of the fun and infectious personality that Baez brings to the game is one thing. But those things wouldn’t hold nearly as much weight of Baez wasn’t insanely talented as a baseball player.

And in recent memory, can you think of a player in Chicago that memorizes you as much as he can?

Everything that Javy Baez does, whether it’s playing defense, swinging out of his shoes at every pitch in or out of the strike zone that he likes or running the bases, is must-see TV.

I mean, people have made highlight reels of this guy tagging people out trying to steal second base.

His very presence on the baseball diamond is like a form of wizardry.

And now that he’s apparently starting to harness the destructive weapon that is his bat, oh boy. This could get fun. Because watching him guess right and get ahold of one is one of my favorite things in sports.

Right now, though he still misses more than you might like, he’s connecting a rate he arguably never has before.

His solid .292 average, .363 OBP and utterly ridiculous .736 slugging of today bear that out. Yes, that is an OPS of 1.099. And yes, that noise you hear is me laughing aloud right now.

One could make a credible argument that, with Anthony Rizzo trying to recover his form, Baez is this team’s second-best player right now behind Kris Bryant.

And if he continues to improve at the plate, he could end up being one of the keys to this entire operation, both in 2018 and beyond.