Jake Burger

[BEARZ77]

Just a great story here ; Burger you might remember was a huge star at MSU and drafted #11 in the entire 2017 draft for major league baseball by the Chicago WS . Then he had consecutive achilles tendon tears in 2018 and 2019, had no where to play last year to start his climb back because of covid and played in a amateur league in St Louis. Battled depression and anxiety related to his injuries and almost quit, but hung with it. Made it to Triple A part way thru this year, was hitting .322, 10 hrs, 36 rbi when the WS regular 3rd baseman went down with injury, and Jake got the temporary call up and went 2/4 in his major league debut last night. Congrats Jake , another Bear ruling the forest.

[BEARZ77]

Just an update, after starting the year in the minors again, Burger got the call up a couple months ago, and is starting to make a name as one of the better young power hitters in the AL. Typical of today's game, his batting average is so-so [around .250] and he strikes out a lot, but he's got .902 ops, .606 slg, and has hit 16 hr's in 51 games, many of them dramatic late game shots. His pace would put him 60+ hrs for a full season. Such a great story of a guy who was an AA , high draft choice and then had to deal with traumatic injuries, depression, and almost 3 full lost years , only to battle back to this point.

[MissouriValleyUnite]

Burger has been the best hitter on our White Sox this year.

On another note, remember when fans/media created a hysteria that Tony La Russa was the cause of everything wrong on the Sox? Woof, that aged horribly. I'll take La Russa's 93-69/81-81 with largely the same rsoter over what I'm watching this year.