Cubs appreciative of Baez’s aggressive D

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HOUSTON — While the Cubs’ impressive rotation gets a lot of rightful attention, infielder Javier Baez’s emergence into one of baseball’s premier defensive players has made the pitching staff’s job much easier.

Baez, who started at shortstop Saturday afternoon against Houston, has flashed moments of pure brilliance lately on defense, making aggressive plays that result in crucial outs.

“I don’t know if there’s ever been a guy who can put a tag on a baserunner the way Javy does,” pitcher Jake Arrieta said. “It’s almost like as soon as the ball is near the baserunner, he’s tagged. It’s almost like second nature to him. It seems like it comes so naturally and so easy.”

Another one of those moments came up in Friday night’s 2-0 win over the Astros, when Baez made an impressive tag of Astros rookie Alex Bregman at third after a wild pitch, a play Cubs manager Joe Maddon joked only one other player, “Mr. September” Benji Gil, could make.

“[Gil was called that] because he always played his best baseball …

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