Watching Ben Zobrist, Always In The Right Place At The Right Time

The whole institution of Major League Baseball exists to separate players from their preferred fates. Every power hitter would like to slot into the order behind an on-base machine; every ace would rather have a surehanded defense arrayed behind him; every shortstop would pick a reliable second baseman as double play partner. The realities of team finances, roster spots, and player-acquisition rules, though, mean that such preferences most often aren't met. This is all a little bit cruel, and in the cases of some ill-fated careers can be downright unjust, but it is also probably for the best on balance. These compromises and reconciliations give the game an empathic element. Running silently underneath each day's scores is the more relatable and sometimes richer drama of people just trying to make their way, to improve their circumstances in their world by playing the hand they've been dealt.

But in baseball as in life, there are a lucky few, and Ben Zobrist is one of those. Though he has the look of a perpetual underdog—he runs and fields with the just-stretched stiffness of a rec league basketball player, and his close-cropped hair and polite manner suggest "friendly mailman" more than "MLB All-Star"—Zobrist's 11-year career has been a story of good fortune getting better. He came up with an organization and manager, Tampa Bay and Joe Maddon, uniquely inclined to make use of his versatile skill set, and he stayed on with them for almost a decade as they grew into postseason regulars. Then, after a four-month interlude with Oakland in 2015, Zobrist joined the Kansas City Royals, batted second, and helped them win a World Series. Now he has reunited with his former manager and plays for baseball's best team, the Chicago Cubs. Wherever he moves in the lineup or in the field he is surrounded by excellence. It's a living.

For most players, such a career arc might inspire envy, not praise. With Zobrist, though, the good breaks seem somehow reciprocal. His chief attribute as a ballplayer is his versatility, an ability to play numerous infield and outfield spots and to end his switch-hitting plate appearances in various displays of effectiveness. The way this talent comes across when you watch a game is as a slight but persistent boosting of the odds, which is a very useful thing if not necessarily a thrilling one. He is both entirely reasonable and a lucky charm, and wherever Zobrist goes, things work out just a notch better than they should.

Trying to dispense portions of credit to individual Cubs for the team's roaring start is a tough task; they are like so many electrons in some mean, run-scoring atom, separate but indispensable. Still, there are games when one or another of them steps forward, and for Zobrist, one of those games came last week in Chicago against the Padres. He went 4-for-4, pulling all four singles to right, but that stat line and description belies the variety involved. It seemed almost as if he were trying to see how much contrast he could achieve in plays that would all register the same on the scoresheet. The hits ranged from seared almost-gappers to hard grounders placed right between the first and second basemen; the swings that produced them were either low wristy sweeps or hurried twitches at inside fastballs.

By themselves, they were all recognizable as Zobrist's work—he is as good at reaching base safely as the average person is at operating doorknobs—but taken together and put in context, they were representative. The last of those four hits, off a changeup that Zobrist planted smack in the middle of right field, looked inconsequential with the Cubs up three in the seventh, and Zobrist's eventually coming around to score seemed like a footnote. In the eighth, though, Alex Dickerson hit a grand slam for the Padres that would have tied the game but for Zobrist's crossing the plate an inning prior. A fortuitous turn or an inevitability, depending on how hard you squint.

Zobrist had an even better game a few days prior. In an 8-6 win over the Washington Nationals, near the middle of what would end up as an eight-game Cubs win streak, he hit two homers, drove in four runs, and walked twice. But that performance seemed somehow the result of the early-season Chicago euphoria as much as anything Zobrist himself did. The Cubs have arrived at 27-9 by way of a cocktail of hope and confidence and daily-exceeded expectation; the blend has Jake Arrieta pitching like a vengeful demon and the lineup turning out runs at a league-best clip. When they lose three of four and things look a little glum, as they surely will someday, that's when Zobrist will really be nice to have around. He'll bring the readiness or the good vibes—whatever they want to call it, whatever they need.

This season, at postgame pressers and the like, Maddon has been wearing a t-shirt with his trademark thick-framed glasses ringed by the words TRY NOT TO SUCK. The shirt is inspired by his advice to young infielder Javier Baez upon his call-up last season, and sales of it benefit Maddon's charity, but it is hard not to read it also as an attempt to reduce his team's sky-high goals to a more manageable scale. The Cubs have such talent, it seems to imply, that mere professional competence should be enough to move it to great ends.

The phrase also serves as a summary of the Cub who's had Maddon's acquaintance the longest. Nothing about Ben Zobrist impresses all that much at a glance—the rigid gait, the thin forearms, the hunched and almost apologetic stance at the plate. He is just good at everything he does. That goodness, repeated enough, starts to look like something remarkable.