After last April, Kosuke Fukudome was the presumptive Rookie of the Year, a Japanese star who had come over to the US and who was poised to help carry the Cubs with great on-base skills, a little pop in his bat and some slick fielding. Of course, we know how that turned out. Every month after April last season saw his stats decline. He remained a good fielder, but his bat was suspect and he ended up having a pretty mediocre season, especially for the money the Cubs were paying him.

So when Kosuke got off to a hot start this season I think a lot of people were a little skeptical. It was nice that he had a good April, but we’d seen this before, and we expected him to fade. And sure enough, he did. He hit a terrible .169/.266/.241 in June. That was worse than any of this months last year, meaning that his hotter start was being followed by an even worse skid, and we could expect another year of bad play.

Instead, Fukudome turned it around in July. His hitting coach from Japan joined the Cubs on July 18, and whether that’s the only reason, since then Fukudome has hit .372/.487/.583. He leads all Cubs batters in wins above replacement with 3.1. And he’s reversed the trend he showed last year, where he declined almost every month:

Furthermore, after a rough start in center field, Fukudome seems to be doing better at the position. He’s now been basically average for a center fielder, defensively, over the course of the season. That’s good enough, given that among qualified center fielders, he’s first in on base percentage, eighth in slugging, and second in wOBA this season.

As far as the Cubs go, for those with more than 100 plate appearances, he’s been the fourth best hitter behind Aramis Ramirez, Derrek Lee and Jake Fox. When you factor in that he plays a tougher defensive position than any of them, his performance is even more impressive. The only drawback has been his platoon status - Lou has had him playing just against right-handers when he can, which of course makes his value seem less than it might otherwise be. But since he’s left-handed, he’s still playing most of the time, and he’s fourth on the team in plate appearances, so it’s not like he’s been on the bench a whole lot.

There have been a lot of bad surprises this season - Ramirez’s shoulder, Harden’s ineffectiveness, the bullpen’s collapse, Bradley’s bad start, Soto’s injury and more. But Fukudome has been a rare pleasant one, giving the Cubs everything they could have asked of him and more so far. Coming into this season it looked like his contract might be a bad one. Now it’s starting to look like he might be about what they hoped they were getting when they signed him.