What to do with Jake Fox?

Check our señor Fox's numbers at AAA Iowa over the past 40 games: he's hitting .423 with a .503 OBP and he's already hit 17 HRs and driven in 50 RBIs. He's also scored 40 R in just 40 games.

How insane is that? I love me a good minor-league story, and this is one of the better ones. In fact, he's even getting some love from BaseballAmerica, reaching #11 on an old Prospect Hot Sheet.

Sweet.

But it doesn't do Jake any good to get all that buzz without a callup to the show. You've watched Bull Durham, you know it ain't fun being in the minors.

What can the Cubs do to take advantage of this monster surge of power?

Call him up: But where do you play him? Sure, he used to be a catcher, but that was a while ago. Now he's more of a 1B, and the Cubs already have Derek Lee and Micah Hoffpauir (another great minor-league story of persistence). So unless you want to put Soriano at 2B and shift the Hoff to LF, and then play Fox at 1B when Derek Lee is hitting into too many double plays, I just don't see it happening.

Trade him: Other teams' GMs aren't as stupid as you think. You can't just "trade him for a prospect" because his numbers look good—this isn't MLB '09: The Show. The best you could do is to send him to a struggling team with a struggling 1B and hope to get a decent reliever with a good arm that can't throw strikes. And that means Piniella will start kicking people around in the clubhouse. Maybe you trade him to the D-Backs to platoon with Chad Tracy or something.

The Real Jake Fox

Here's the thing about Jake Fox: he will not continue to hit like this. He will not hit over .400 at AAA or at the big-league level. Has he earned a shot at playing in the bigs? For sure. And it pains me to see guys like him, like Julio Zuleta, and Roberto Petagine never get a serious crack at a major league lineup.

But the reality is that he's in AAA for a reason—he doesn't have a position and he's a bit of a late bloomer. Now he just needs to get a little lucky to get his shot.

Then he'll have to prove it all over again once he does....