Cubs Chat with Ian Casselberry

The Chicago Cubs keep playing brilliant baseball.

Entering this week, the Cubs are 47-20, and they have a 12.5 game lead over the No. 2 team in the National League Central, the St. Louis Cardinals. Chicago opens a three-game series against the Cardinals tonight. (You can hear all Cubs games this season on 93.5).

The Cubs just swept the Pittsburgh Pirates over the weekend, the the North Siders don't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

Chicago seems to be having its success by having true team success.

Here's a podcast with Bloguin's Ian Casselberry talking Cubs, White Sox and Ichiro Suzuki chasing the 3,000-hit milestone:

In the podcast, I asked Ian about Cubs' prospect Wilson Contreras, if the Cubs are buyers at the Aug. 1 trade deadline, and if the Cubs can keep up its continued successes.

Speaking of successes, Contreras was brought up from Triple-A Iowa over the weekend.

The 24-year-old Contreras joins the first major league roster of his career after batting .350 (71-for-203) with 16 doubles, three triples, nine home runs and 43 RBI in 54 games with Iowa. He has turned in a .439 on-base percentage and .591 slugging percentage, good for a 1.030 OPS. Among Pacific Coast League leaders,

Contreras was named Chicago's 2015 Minor League Player of the Year after winning the Southern League batting title with Double-A Tennessee.

All that hard work paid off for Contreras in just one simple swing. In fact, it was his first swing he took in the Majors. And, it went over the center field wall.

Contreras is the first Cub to homer in his first career plate appearance while at Wrigley Field since Cuno Barragan on Sept. 1, 1961 and that was against the Giants. The last time it happened in the Majors was Pittsburgh's Starling Marte in July 2012.