Patrick Wisdom didn’t really know anyone when he reported to the South Bend alternate training site during the 2020 pandemic season. He finalized a minor-league contract with the Cubs on Aug. 23, nine days after getting released by the Mariners. He first checked into a hotel and then moved into the apartment complex adjacent to Four Winds Field. COVID-19 protocols kept him away from his young family.
The Cubs’ roster situation was so fluid that some days they couldn’t even field a defense for a simulated game. Wisdom might have been grouped with only two or three other hitters, including Christopher Morel and Brennen Davis, two intriguing prospects without much high-level experience to that point. They might face a certain pitcher, wait behind a screen for their next at-bat and get more looks against different pitchers throughout the workout. Wisdom remembered hitting two home runs during his first day in South Bend, an instant confidence boost after a disappointing experience with the Mariners.
After playing parts of four seasons with the Pacific Coast League affiliates of the Cardinals and Rangers, Wisdom recognized and respected Marty Pevey, the longtime Triple-A Iowa manager who helped supervise the training camp. But mostly Wisdom got the sense that people were looking at him and wondering: Who is this guy?
That’s a question that team officials, Cubs fans and the Chicago media have been asking throughout this rebuilding process. The answers are hard to come by, and any discovery is measured against the reality of the situation. Morel will eventually cool down, the way opposing pitchers adjusted after Seiya Suzuki’s hot start. Nico Hoerner’s promising effectiveness as a major-league shortstop could be limited by future restrictions on defensive shifting. The value of these emerging homegrown pitchers would be enhanced with a No. 1 starter atop the rotation. The Cubs are on pace for a 95-loss season heading into this weekend’s three-game series at Yankee Stadium.
Yet this is a real opportunity for players to make names for themselves and make a substantial amount of money, whether or not they make it all the way through to “The Next Great Cubs Team.” As a player who had been too self-critical earlier in his career, Wisdom is trying to simply focus on a day-to-day approach. Add it up through his first 161 games in a Cubs uniform and this is Wisdom’s production: 40 home runs, 92 RBIs, 25 doubles, 86 runs scored and an .805 OPS.
“That’s big-time pop and those guys are hard to find,” Cubs manager David Ross said. “I remember my first season, 2020, hearing about this guy who was lighting up the alt site. You hear about this Patrick Wisdom guy (and then) you see what everybody loved about him, his phenomenal defense, his heads-up base running. When you’re at an alt site and there’s no fans – and you’re competing against the same guys and coaches are raving about your work — it just says something about who you are as a person and a player.”
Wisdom also has 228 strikeouts in 590 plate appearances across parts of three seasons with the Cubs. He’s not a contact hitter (.227 batting average), an on-base machine (30 percent) or a young player anymore (30 years old). But he’s a plus defender at third base, athletic enough to play center field on occasion, and a versatile option if the Cubs need a first baseman or a corner outfielder. There’s a lot to work with here, especially considering that he hasn’t even entered the arbitration system yet and isn’t positioned to become a free agent until after the 2026 season.
“As a manager, there’s areas that you give and take,” Ross said. “Strikeouts are going to come with the slug. Now can you have that in the middle of your lineup every single day to carry you? I don’t know. You got to have a lot of pieces around that. But when I bat him sixth, seventh, eighth — usually bad hitters like me are hitting down there. He’s really good and he’s got a lot of thump in his bat. Against lefties, I can put him in the middle of that order. You also try to match up and move him around to where you feel like his swing plays well against certain pitchers.
“I know what’s showing up in every other aspect of his game. That’s what you’re looking for — when a player can bring defense, base-running, good at-bats, power, on-base. When you can bring four of the five, or three of the five consistently, you can start making pieces around that.”
Wisdom is an out-of-nowhere story compared to the star-studded group of players he joined near the end of the 2020 season and helped elevate into first place for three weeks last June. But he wasn’t exactly an overlooked or under-the-radar prospect. Kris Bryant remembered playing against him in the West Coast Conference. The Cardinals — an organization historically known for drafting and developing talent — selected him with the No. 52 pick in the 2012 draft out of Saint Mary’s College of California.
Patience doesn’t always pay off with these players auditioning throughout a losing season. The Cubs will need a higher success rate in this area, with Nick Madrigal and Clint Frazier being two prominent examples of hitters who have underwhelmed so far, for a variety of reasons. Wisdom, however, set a new franchise record for home runs by a rookie (28) amid the letdown from last year’s sell-off at the trade deadline. It took longer than anticipated, but Wisdom is now essentially an everyday player at the major-league level.
“It means a lot, just to know that they believe in me and they want me to succeed,” Wisdom said. “Sometimes if I have bad games in a row, it’s tough on me because I obviously want to come through for the team. I want to help us win. When I’m not doing that, it makes it a lot harder on myself. But it’s knowing that they’re quick to flush it, so I need to be quick to flush it, too. It’s nice to have that belief and that confidence.”
Wisdom has been around long enough to not look too far into the future. He knows the baseball industry is volatile and unpredictable. It’s like the veteran players on short-term contracts whose names will be mentioned in trade rumors leading up to the Aug. 2 deadline. It’s kind of awkward to be answering big-picture questions about a rebuilding team that’s already 10 games under .500. They just work here.
“I love this team,” Wisdom said. “We have a great clubhouse. It’s been a lot of fun to play with these guys and I look forward to many more wins and many more games. That’s pretty much all I got on that. It’s hard for me to say more since I’m still the new guy here and I’m still just trying to get my feet wet with the team as well.”
(Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski / USA Today)