Michael Conforto is starting to look like the hitter the Chicago Cubs thought they were getting. After a slow opening stretch, the former Dodger has found a rhythm at the plate just as the Cubs have begun to pile up runs, a timing that matters with the team carrying nine injured pitchers on its roster.
Conforto entered a weekend series against the New York Mets with a.273 batting average, six hits in 28 plate appearances and a production line that still looks stronger than the surface numbers suggested. He went 5-for-12 with two walks last week, and even after the early struggles his wRC+ sits at 137. That is a useful reminder of why Jed Hoyer and the Cubs’ braintrust brought him in: they wanted steadiness, not streaks.
The recent results have been uneven in one place and loud in another. In the Phillies series, Conforto got only two pinch-hit plate appearances and struck out in both, but the Cubs kept scoring, putting up 35 runs across their past four games. In their previous three wins, they scored seven or more runs every time, the kind of burst that can hide a lot of other problems.
Those problems are not small. Porter Hodge is out for the season with a UCL injury, leaving the Cubs with nine pitchers injured on the roster and more pressure on the lineup to keep carrying games. The offense has lacked consistency for much of the season, which is why Conforto’s profile matters so much now: he owns a.245 career batting average, a.343 on-base percentage and just a shade under 600 RBIs, the résumé of a veteran who has spent years surviving by being useful in the middle of a lineup.
The tension for the Cubs is that they do not need Conforto to be perfect, but they do need him to be what they paid for. His recent surge suggests he can help stabilize an offense that has been forced to do extra work, yet the two strikeouts in limited chances against Philadelphia are a reminder that the clean version of this story is not the whole one. For Chicago, the next stretch will show whether this is the start of a real run from Conforto or just a brief lift during a hot team stretch.
