Alfonso Soriano and Mike Fontenot have both had disappointing seasons, but both of them have started the second half in promising fashion.

Soriano has actually been heating up for a while now–even though he hadn’t had a home run since early June before this weekend, he was hitting .321/.406/.500 over the last two weeks. Yesterday’s 2-3, 1 HR, 1 BB performance will only help that number. When I looked at the Cubs’ weighted on-base percentages on July 2, Soriano was at .300 - pretty much exactly replacement level, or as I like to think of it, “Bobby Scales production.” Today he’s up to .319.

Fangraphs’ R.J. Anderson took a look at Soriano performance this season on July 8 and came to the conclusion that the problem was that the league stopped throwing him fastballs and he can’t really hit breaking pitches. If it seems somewhat improbable that a player couldn’t perform at the level Soriano does if he couldn’t hit breaking pitches, well, it is. And in fact, when Anderson wrote his piece, 45.7 percent of Soriano’s pitches seen were fastballs. Today, the number stands at 45.4 percent meaning he’s seen even fewer fastballs since that piece was published, even though he’s hitting quite nicely. Perhaps his knee is finally healthy, or perhaps he’s just going on one of his patented hot streaks, but whatever the story, it doesn’t seem to matter too much that he’s seeing fewer fastballs over the last couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, Fontenot had not been heating up prior to this series. Before yesterday he was hitting .238/.238/.429 over the past two weeks. Like Soriano, he hit his first home run since early June this weekend. And he went 3 for 5 with a double today.

Also like Soriano, his wOBA has been on the rise. On July 2 it was .289. Today it’s .305, which is actually above replacement level. His platoon numbers are rising, too - Fontenot is up to a .710 OPS versus right-handed pitching, which is nothing to write home about. But he’s a very good defensive player (think about his great glove-to-glove feed to Theriot to get Carlos Zambrano out of a first-inning jam the other day).

Obviously, both players still have work to do. If the Cubs are going to make the playoffs, Soriano is going to need to be a big part of that, and Fontenot is going to need to play his role, too. Maybe their recent stats are a result of playing the worst team in baseball, but Cubs fans had better hope these two are coming around.