Breaking: Jorge Soler is Good at Baseball

Okay, so it isn’t exactly breaking, but the reports out of Chicago last night were no less exciting: Jorge Soler is really, really good at baseball. He proved that over and over and over again last night, whether it was gunning down Zack Cozart after scooping up Jon Lester’s errant pick-off attempt (the pitcher’s first since 2013) or blasting two 2-run homers into the unpopulated bleachers.

Soler is a man who is capable of doing things with an to a baseball that leave people dumbstruck. Even someone like me, who is obnoxiously voluble as they come, is frequently reduced to such nondescript utterances as “dude” or “woah.” It’s as though watching the massive Cuban mashing cowhide causes me to devolve into Joey Lawrence.

On Monday night in Wrigley, the least touted (though not for long) among the Cubs cadre of supposed future superstars did all he could to permanently minimize my vocabulary. Even his swings and misses caused visceral groans; there’s just so much latent potential.

I was hoping to provide a series of florid descriptions to accompany the following videos, but I kept pecking out indiscernible text while puddles of drool collected on my keyboard. With that in mind, I thought it best to just let the dulcet tones of Pat Hughes and Len Kasper narrate Soler’s magnificence. Hip-hip-Jorge!