Morel makes up for error by mashing rally-starting homer

CHICAGO -- Christopher Morel slid across the plate, popped up and yelled and gave an emphatic high-five to Cody Bellinger. The Wrigley Field crowd matched his energy, having just watched the North Siders complete a comeback with six runs across the final three innings.

It was a night full of emotional swings, both for the rival fans who filled the Friendly Confines, but also for Morel. After making a critical error that helped the White Sox to an early lead, he slugged a homer and scored the game’s decisive run in a 7-6 victory for the Cubs on Tuesday.

“Super mature by him,” Cubs slugger Patrick Wisdom said. “He could have kind of cashed it in, if you will, after the play. But we're there picking him up and he comes up with a big homer. He's just an exciting player to be around. I think he's built for those moments.”

Last season, Morel authored one of the more memorable moments in the history of the Crosstown Series, blasting a three-run walk-off homer on Aug. 16 at Wrigley. His wild sprint around the bases -- a hectic trek that included him ripping his jersey off in the excitement -- was turned into a bobblehead and handed out on Saturday.

In the opener of this two-game set, Morel was at risk of being a reason the Cubs dropped the game against the 15-46 White Sox. In the fourth inning, Morel misplayed a grounder from Paul DeJong, leading to a run on the play and sending the frame spiraling to a five-run outburst against Cubs lefty Shota Imanaga.

“He was saying, ‘I’m sorry,’” Imanaga said via his interpreter, Edwin Stanberry. “But I gave him a gesture that, ‘It’s all good.’”

During a 42-minute rain delay in the top of the fifth inning, more of Morel’s teammates took the intermission as a chance to pick the third baseman up. Morel said multiple players offered words of support, telling him to brush off the fielding mistake and focus on the chances he still had coming once play resumed.

“Those things happen,” Cubs left fielder Ian Happ said of the error. “A couple guys being able to talk to Morel and get him back to a place where, 'Hey, man, you're a big part of this team. You're going to have big at-bats later in the game,’ [was big]. And he's done a great job of being able to turn the page throughout his career and come up with clutch hits.”

In the home half of the sixth inning, White Sox reliever Justin Anderson retired the first two batters he faced before hitting Bellinger with a pitch. That set the stage for Morel, who entered the night with one homer in his previous 19 games.

The 24-year-old Morel has also run into hard luck along the way. Entering Tuesday night, Morel had a .503 expected slugging percentage on the season, per Statcast, but only a .371 slugging percentage in reality. He headed into the game with a .301 weighted on-base average, compared to a .379 xwOBA that ranked in the top 8% of qualified batters in the Majors.

“The expected numbers based on his batted-ball profile are like 100 points better than his numbers,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said. “Those are the kind of things you just assume they even out over the course of the season.”

Anderson fired a first-pitch slider that lingered in the zone and Morel sent it sailing into the bleacher seats in left-center field. Usually overflowing with enthusiasm, Morel entered into a more subdued home run trot, but the crowd was revving up. The old ballpark shook when Wisdom launched a two-run, pinch-hit homer to tie the game two batters later.

“That got the momentum back,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said of Morel’s shot. “It got the crowd, the Cubs fans in the stands, going again.”

Then in the eighth, Bellinger drew a one-out walk and then raced to second on a chopper up the middle by Morel. The alert baserunning by Bellinger gave Morel an infield single, and put Happ in a position to complete the comeback. He did so by pulling an offering from Jordan Leasure into the right-field corner, scoring both runners.

“I just really want to give a shoutout to my teammates,” Morel said via team translator Fredy Quevedo Jr. “They all came in and cheered me up. They gave me those words of consolation. That really helped me just to go out there and just come together as a team and then get the results.”