Levi Jordan – Pic by Micah Manuel/Tennessee Smokies
Before the 2019 season, I profiled infielder Levi Jordan as part of my offseason baseball series. The Cubs drafted Jordan the summer before out of the University of Washington. He wound up spending most of his time that year in Eugene where he was a playoff hero in the Emerald’s championship run. I mentioned how much I liked how he played the game and that he did everything the right way. That was on the field, in the batters box, and on the base paths. He was a quality player even if the numbers weren’t there yet.
Fast forward to 2019 and I actually got to see Jordan in person in early May in Clinton Iowa. He was standing next to Manager Buddy Bailey and Jordan had a boot on almost all the way up to his knee. He would spend most of that summer with that boot on. In fact, he only played in 66 Games that summer because of the foot injury.
Jordan returned late in the season and it took him a while to get going but he was on the playoff roster for South Bend. Manager Buddy Bailey loved his defense at third base, especially since Chris Morel had a knee injury and had been out since mid-July. During the playoffs, Jordan stepped up his game again and hit another home run in the championship game.
Jordan’s career, along with everyone else’s, was put on pause by the pandemic.
In 2021, Jordan would skip High-A baseball and head straight to Tennessee last spring where he put up some respectable stats in the first half of the year. He only played in Tennessee about six weeks before getting the call to Iowa. He struggled somewhat in Des Moines hitting only in the .230s.
Heading into the 2022 season, I thought Jordan would be back at Iowa to start the year and he was, but he just did not get very much playing time. In the month of April, he only got in six games. To get him more playing time and to get the bat working, he was sent back to Tennessee where he has just destroyed Southern League pitching.
Heading into Sunday, he was hitting .345 and almost .500 the last two weeks of May. He’s just been on fire. And on Sunday, he cranked out another home run, a line drive screamer over the left field wall.
This much is clear, Jordan‘s going to be heading to Iowa very soon.
How soon? You never know about these things. Jordan is making it very hard on the Cubs to keep him down in Tennessee as he is starting to draw attention to himself from writers like myself and from opponent broadcasters and teams. I am excited to see him get a second chance at Iowa and hopefully he’ll have a lot more opportunities to play every day.
