Ex-Cub Javy Baez on long road back to All-Star Game: ‘I questioned it myself’

ATLANTA — There’s only one slight flaw in this delightful narrative about the starting center fielders in Tuesday’s All-Star Game being the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong and the Tigers’ Javy Baez, who were traded for each other when Baez was a Cub and Crow-Armstrong a Mets prospect in 2021.

That flaw is the thing nobody’s talking about, which is that Baez isn’t even a real center fielder. No, the dude is still primarily a shortstop, definitely a middle infielder and — some things don’t change — completely at home in the dirt.

But the Tigers needed a center fielder when Parker Meadows got hurt, and Baez, who always knew he could be slick out in the grass, became the temporary answer. That he performed the task with seeming ease and alacrity should surprise no one who has admired his defensive instincts through the years. That he also started hitting and the surging Tigers kept winning led fans to cast All-Star votes for him in huge numbers, a nice change, given how significantly Baez had struggled since signing a six-year, $140 million deal with the team heading into 2022.

Meadows has been back in center for more than a month. At least Baez gets to have fun manning the position on a grand stage at Truist Park, making him the only player ever to start All-Star Games at shortstop and in the outfield. He also joins Pete Rose, Harmon Killebrew and Albert Pujols as the only players to start All-Star Games at three positions; as a Cub, Baez started at second base in 2018 and at shortstop in 2019.

Baez’s career has taken multiple downturns since his peak Cubs years, never more so than last year, when he batted .184 with six home runs in only 80 games before season-ending hip surgery. With the bum hip and ever-present back pain, he was a shell of his old self. The rap on him for swinging at impossible-to-hit pitches grew louder than ever.

This comeback — he’s batting .275 with 10 homers and 39 RBI — has brought him great satisfaction, as well as relief.

“What I’ve been through was for a reason,” he said. “I feel good about myself.”

The doubts — his own — were powerful.

“I questioned it myself if I was going to come back, if my body was going to respond, if I was going to have success again in the regular season,” he said. “It was hard, but I worked for it. I struggled and I worked for it, and everything is paying off.”

Former Cubs teammate Kyle Schwarber, a third-time All-Star — all since leaving the North Side — was happy to see his 2016 World Series pal.

“As baseball players, what you go through on a daily basis, there’s going to be failure, there’s going to be things that slap you in the face a little bit,” Schwarber said. “To see the way he’s been able to handle it and bounce back, and now he’s playing at that level that he [played] at for years, I think that’s so awesome. And I’m happy for him, and I’m happy to see he’s on a team that’s in first place and they’re well on their way to getting to the postseason and making a run.”

Crow-Armstrong is on the Javy train, too — no surprise, considering Baez was one of his favorite players back in the day.

“It’s going to be really cool to be able to share the field with him,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I’m just happy to see how this year has gone for him.”