Rewind 2023: Jake Cave

When I snapped this at Yankee Stadium on April 4th, could Jake Cave have imagined how 2023 would play out?  Happy to have made the big league roster coming out of Clearwater, here was facing the team that drafted him a dozen years earlier.  Could he have expected to play almost as many games for AAA Lehigh Valley (and hit close to .350) as he would for the Phillies?  Did he forsee the diving catches he'd make playing left field?  Or that home run in the Little League Classic at Williamsport, PA?  And that he would make the last out of the NLCS in October, hoping to be a hero, but flying out in the bottom of the ninth after the Phillies bats fell maddeningly cold?
Now, less than a month from turning 31, he wonders if he'll be back in Philadelphia, or land on any major league roster as 2024 approaches.

 

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