Chicago Cubs prospect Javier Baez is on a tear. The former Peoria Chiefs shortstop connected for two home runs against Japan’s World Baseball Classic team yesterday and hit two more against the Kansas City Royals today.
Against Team Japan, Baez hit a seventh-inning homer and a ninth-inning homer. The latter homer was a walkoff roundtripper; both were the first pitches he saw in those at-bats. When he hit his first home run today off Royals SP Bruce Chen — also on the first pitch he saw — Baez had homered on three consecutive pitches.
Baez wasn’t done blasting pitches from Chen. Here’s how the article on the Cubs’ website described his subsequent at-bats:
After taking Chen just short of the warning track in the third, Baez appeared to leave the park with another jaw-dropping, two-out solo shot in the fifth. The ball headed out on a trajectory to go over the left-field scoreboard, and there were no confirmed sightings of the ball landing.
Baez looks like the real deal. In 80 games split between the Class A Peoria Chiefs and the Class A+ Daytona Cubs last year, he hit .294 with 16 HR, 46 RBI and 24 SB. Officially, he’s hitting .324 (11-for-34) with 4 HR and 8 RBI in 14 spring training games; that doesn’t include his two homers against Team Japan.
Brewers fans are not looking forward to seeing him in the future.
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