One day before Anthony Rizzo officially returned to the organization of the Chicago Cubs after announcing his retirement earlier this week, another favorite from Cubs fans should make his return Wrigley Field on Friday afternoon. While the Cubs are preparing to welcome the Rays of Tampa Bay this weekend, Christopher Morel will return to the Friendship Confines for the first time since his negotiations last season.
Trading Morel before the MLB 2024 commercial deadline marked one of the most daring movements in the mandate of Jed Hoyer as president of the Cubs baseball operations. Morel was the enigmatic leader of the Cubs, and although his bat flashes signs of transporting the team’s starting program, the Cubs offensive desperately needed a reshuffle. For Hoyer, this meant moving the Morel to the shelves for Isaac Paredes.
Used exclusively as aerobatic this season with the Rays, Morel has not quite found the offensive success he had with the Cubs in the first two years of his career. Thanks to 269 appearances on the plate, Morel cut .227 / .290 / .405 with a WRC + of 91 and 10 circuits. Broken withdrawals remain the greatest thing that retains Morel, because the 26 -year -old withdraws more than 36% of the time this season.
Cubs fans will not believe who is back in Wrigley this weekend
In other words, despite what some fans believed at the time, the Cubs did not make a mistake with their decision to exchange Morel. Morel has athletics to play multiple positions, but as the Cubs discovered, that did not necessarily make him a good field player. Morel was the best in the outside field, and taking into account the harvest of field perspectives that the cubs already had, a change of position would not have made the most meaning. Without forgetting, Trading Morel was the decision that finally led the Cubs to acquire Kyle Tucker the last season.
It is not to discredit Morel’s race with the Cubs. Between having struck a home run during his first major stick league or the home circuit that he hit the White Sox in Chicago in 202, the memories are not lacking in Morel’s time on the north side. Memories that probably forced fans of cubs to enhance it more than its production did not suggest it. Nevertheless, see him return to Wrigley Field this weekend will be a moment of well-being while fans work in their anxiety with the playoffs.
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