whatever happened to …

Trent Giambrone, former Delta State standout, doesn’t appear to have lost his hitting stroke despite many months away from facing live pitching. Giambrone, a Chicago Cubs farmhand currently playing in the Roberto Clemente (Puerto Rican) League, went 2-for-5 with two homers and four RBIs for Caguas on Wednesday. The 26-year-old infielder is 3-for-9 in two games since the league got under way. Giambrone was lighting up the Cactus League last spring, batting .458 with a homer and 12 RBIs in 15 games for the Cubs. Then, in mid-March, baseball came to a screeching halt. When MLB resumed in July, Giambrone was not among the 60 players in the Cubs’ pool for the 2020 season and thus never got any at-bats even in the team’s alternate camp. A 25th-round draft pick out of DSU in 2016, the 5-foot-8, 175-pound Giambrone reached Triple-A Iowa in 2019 and hit .241 with 23 homers and 17 steals. He’s a good glove man, having won a national defensive player of the year award at DSU. He isn’t on the Cubs’ 40-man roster, so he’s eligible to be plucked in today’s Rule 5 draft.