Checking in on the Cubs through the First Trimester

One third of the way through the season, how’s everybody doing?

Amazing how one short weekend can change your whole perspective on things. A few days ago, Cubs fans were frustrated and annoyed with the team, fresh off back-to-back road sweep losses, wondering just how long we have to wait after winning the World Series before we officially complain. Three days later, the Cubs completed a weekend sweep of the Cardinals on three comeback wins and moved back to within a game of the division lead.

The Cubs were heavy NL Central favorites at the start of the season, and they remain sizable favorites now. There’s no reason to believe the Milwaukee Brewers are much of a threat despite their one-game lead, and the Cubs sure seem to have St. Louis’s number. Maybe the Cubs are more like 60–70% division favorites now instead of 90% like when the season started, but they’re still in good shape. You can’t win a division in the first third of the season — you can only lose it. The Mets and Giants have virtually no shot at division titles. The Cubs haven’t had much of anything go right and are still big favorites. Let’s all keep a little perspective here.

The Cubs are now 28–27, one game past the one-third mark of the season. Let’s take another trip around the roster and check out the numbers behind the numbers updated through game 54 (not including Sunday’s game) to see how our Cubbies our doing…

Around the Infield

Kris Bryant

Bryant is the one thing that has gone right for the Cubs almost any given day of the season. KB still leads the team in hits (53), walks (35), runs (35), doubles (13), home runs (12), and batting average (.273). He basically leads the team in every category except steals (one off the lead) and RBIs. The RBIs of course aren’t totally his fault, hitting second behind a struggling leadoff spot.

Bryant is matching his MVP numbers step for step, though like many Cubs players, hasn’t been quite as impactful on defense this season. His walk rate is way up as he continues to improve his eye at the plate, and he’s just outside the top 10 in WAR and right in the thick of the MVP race again. Bryant is batting .363 in Cubs wins and only .174 in losses. That’s almost a full extra hit per game in wins — just what an MVP does.

Anthony Rizzo

The Cubs’ other MVP candidate has not pulled his weight at the plate this season. Anthony Rizzo is still getting plenty of walks (32) and hit-by-pitches (12, leading the league) to keep his OBP up, but his .226 batting average has struggled all season. It’s certainly not because of his eye at the plate, which has been better than ever. Rizzo gets on base with a walk or HBP in over 18% of his plate appearances, up from around 14% normally for him, and his strikeout rate is down from 18 to 14%.

At first glance, Rizzo’s power looks pretty good with 12 homers, tied for the team lead and on pace for a career-high 36. But the power has been isolated, and Rizzo has only 8 doubles, way down from 43 last year, essentially half the pace. Rizzo does lead the team with 30 RBI, but Bryant gets plenty of credit for that, forever on base in front of him. Rizzo’s at only 1.1 WAR so far, about half what we’ve come to expect from him.

A lot of Rizzo’s problems still look like bad luck. His .208 BABIP is pretty miserable, and it was even worse in May at .165. His ground-ball BABIP of .086 is practically zero. The shift appears to be really affecting Rizzo this season, much more than usual. Perhaps Rizzo needs to be more aggressive at the plate and look to pull the ball, but with the young hitters struggling all around Bryzzo, pitchers seem to be pitching more carefully than ever to each.

One saving Rizzo grace: he’s hitting 10/29 with a 1.121 OPS in late & close game situations when pitchers have no choice but to come after him. Struggles or not, Rizzo is still as clutch as ever.

Addison Russell

Like just about every young Cubs player, Russell has really struggled at the plate. He’s hitting only .211 so far with just 3 home runs and an OPS+ of 70. Yet still it’s important to remember how good Russell has been at what he’s best at — defense. His defensive WAR of 1.2 would be good enough on its own to place him second on the team in overall WAR so far even though he’s basically given the team nothing at the plate. That defense is irreplaceable.

Russell’s strikeout rate remains quite high, and he’s struggled this season when he gets behind in the count, hitting only .161. Perhaps it’s time to stop placing our Russell expectations among the Seagers and Lindors of the world. He’s hitting .236 in his career with plenty of sample size, and it’s starting to look like last year’s 21 HR 90 RBI season may have been the outlier. Still, Russell is very young, and as long as he plays defense this well he’s still a good starter and very valuable even if his offense doesn’t improve further. At some point, sliding him down from the 5-spot in the lineup may be wise.

Javy Baez

If you haven’t noticed yet, Baez has surprised us all by being the second most consistent Cubs regular this season. His power has really stepped up with nine home runs and he’s on pace for 27 HR and 75 RBI, basically stealing Addison Russell’s power numbers from last season. Baez actually leads Cubs regulars in batting average at .270, after Bryant went 0-for-4 on Sunday, and he’s just thousandths short of Rizzo’s OPS.

One area that hasn’t improved? Javy’s eye at the plate. He’s still striking out 26% of the time, and he’s earned only one non-intentional walk in 160 plate appearances. Javy’s defense also hasn’t been quite as strong this season, in part because he just isn’t playing in the field quite as much.

Baez has been way better at home, with twice as many hits, doubles, and RBI in essentially the same number of games. And much to no one’s surprise, his success is strongly dependent on the first few pitches at the plate. Baez is hitting .364 ahead in the count versus .200 behind. If he goes down 0–2, he has a greater than 50% strikeout rate, while he’s mashing the ball at .438 when he gets ahead 2–0. All of that is surprising to exactly no one that watches the Cubs since everyone on the planet now knows Javy chases down and away outside the zone when he’s behind. Expect some negative regression to the mean on the power numbers as the summer rolls on.

Willson Contreras

A quick glance at Willson’s stats make it look like he’s mostly on pace with last year’s counting stats, but that’s not the case. Contreras played only 76 games last year so he’s already 62% of the way toward that total and certainly not 62% toward last year’s totals.

Contreras has mirrored Russell so far, excellent in defense (much better than expected) but really struggling at the plate. Contreras has a terrible 30% strikeout rate and his power has fallen off so far, and he’s really struggling with just .222 batting average against righties. Contreras has started just over three-quarters of the Cubs games at catcher this season after playing all over the field last season, just three at-bats this year while not at catcher. That’s a lot of time in the crouch and it feels like Chicago could use a third catcher at times, but it’s not like there’s any room in the outfield for Contreras anyways. Even with the struggling bat, Contreras is still irreplaceable.

Miguel Montero

Miggy’s bat cooled down some in May but Montero would still have the second best hitting numbers on the team if they projected full time. He had mostly a normal May after a huge early start, so expect the numbers to keep regressing down a bit going forward.

Heading to the Outfield

Jason Heyward

Would you believe J-Hey would be Chicago’s second best positional player through a third of the season? That’s great for Heyward but probably also a pretty good referendum on the season as a whole too. Heyward is second on the team in WAR even though his injury means he’s played in only about a quarter of the team’s games instead of a third, and he’s quietly having a borderline All Star year. Heyward’s 162-game pace right now would be a .260 season with 20 HR 100 RBI on top of all the other great things he does on the bases and in the field.

Those five homers are great but are probably a lucky power spike considering he’s at just three doubles, well off his three-year average of 29. But even if some of those homers turn into doubles as the season wears on, this is the Heyward Chicago hoped it was getting when they paid so much.

Kyle Schwarber

Schwarber was the hero this weekend with his first career grand slam to save the Saturday game against the Cards, but that one hit can’t erase a pretty abysmal start to the season.

Let’s start with the bad. Schwarber is at -0.9 WAR, straight up costing the team a win so far, and his .166 batting average ranks 171st out of 173 qualified hitters. That’s really bad and it’s even more painful at the top of the lineup with so many wasted opportunities in front of Bryant and Rizzo.

Schwarber is still walking a lot, better than one-in-eight plate appearances, and the power is certainly still lurking with nine homers, shockingly high considering his struggles just to put the ball in play. He is still striking out more than a drunk 23-year-old dude at a hipster bar, an awful 35% strikeout rate. Schwarber so far this season has become Adam Dunn, that three-outcome power hitter. An incredible 42.7% of his plate appearances end with a strikeout or a walk.

Some of the splits get even uglier. Against lefties, Schwarber is hitting only .139 with just two extra-base hits in 45 plate appearances and a horrendous 42% strikeout rate. That’s basically about as well as you would hate most lefties. Eight of his nine home runs have been against RHP. Schwarber is also batting .092 against relief pitchers so he’s not exactly coming through late in the game. And if you’re thinking about dropping him in the lineup, he’s hit only .077 outside the lead-off spot. It’s… not good.

The problem with Schwarber is that he’s essentially a one-tool player, and guys like that have to be really good at that tool to remain valuable. Schwarber’s power is incredible but he’s still the Cubs’ worst defender (even if he’s been okay out there) and doesn’t have any speed or hit for average yet. And if he’s unplayable against lefties and can’t hit relief pitchers and struggles in various spots in the lineup and struggles against a shift and… see the problem here? There’s just far too many limiting factors right now.

The good news? The good news is that Kyle Schwarber is still only 24, still only a year off a devastating knee injury, and has still played only 120 games in his career, not even a full season yet. And BABIP numbers suggest that Schwarber has been absurdly unlucky so far at .193 on the season and a comically tragic .094 in May.

So Kyle Schwarber will probably come back around. Probably. But there’s a lot of coming around to do, and it’s become increasingly difficult to keep giving him time to do so at the top of the lineup. He’s the one young Cubs player fans should be most worried about right now.

Ben Zobrist

Zobrist’s playing time is down from his usual, though he’s still fourth on the team in plate appearances. He’s the poster boy of the Cubs silly problem of having too many playable position players, a $16.5 million guy without a regular spot in the lineup.

He’s struggled some this year, perhaps pressing a bit while out of a regular routine. Zobrist’s walk rate is down a bit and his 18% strikeout rate is his highest since 2011 (though still one of the Cubs better rates). He’s struggling against lefties at just .184 batting average and has a really weird split with a .159 average while ahead in the count. It feels like Cubs could benefit by featuring Zobrist a bit further up the lineup against righties and maybe some more time leading off.

Albert Almora Jr

Almora doesn’t have a ton of data yet but so far is looking like the perfect player to platoon with Schwarber and Zobrist. Those two struggle against lefties and Almora is mashing them with a .359 batting average, while he struggles with .194 against righties. He’s the one Cubs player other than Baez that barely ever walks, only 13 in his career, but the tradeoff there is a lower strikeout rate and Almora’s speed makes him a useful contact hitter. Almora has been fine so far. He’s certainly not Dexter Fowler, but we knew that already.

John Jay

Jay has done exactly what the Cubs hoped for this season. His walk rate is up and his .381 OBP is a career-high rate as he continues to chew up pitches. He could be an occasional option at the top of the lineup, though he’s hit only .154 in 14 plate appearances there so far. Jay is the rare Cubs hitter that has been pretty even-keeled against right- and left-handed pitching. He’s a reliable starter-level guy that can play against anyone. A perfect veteran rotation player.

Ian Happ

Happ was the hero Sunday night with two home runs including the 3-run go-ahead shot, and he had a homer in his first series against St. Louis too. He’s struggled quite a bit in between with just five hits in his previous 12 games before yesterday, a .135 average with a terrible 46% strikeout rate. Not great, Bob. Still if all Ian Happ ever does is hit .150 against 28 other teams but continue to hit a home run every 4.5 at-bats against the Cardinals, I imagine most Cubs fans would take it.

Happ is still only 22, youngest of all the young Cubs players, and the power appears to be real. He has plenty of work to do but looks valuable, whether the Cubs keep or trade him.

The Pitching Staff

Starters

Jon Lester has been good as always. His walks and FIP are up a bit but he’s been very solid. John Lackey has a career-high strikeout rate, a pleasant surprise. He’s still struggling in the first inning and is getting hammered on first-pitch swings, allowing an absurd .548 batting average on 31 at-bats. He’s a fine fourth pitcher and generally gets better as the year goes on. So does Kyle Hendricks, who is already rounding into good shape. He struggled early on but saw a 4.33 strikeout-to-walk ratio in May with a return to normalcy on his control. He still can’t pitch past the sixth, a 13.50 ERA in two late appearances. Eddie Butler has been… fine I guess. Thirteen walks in 18 innings are not great, and neither is a WHIP over 1.6. He’s a placeholder, and he’s certainly been better than Brett Anderson at least.

Jake Arrieta is the one name that continues to really struggle. Like Lackey, he has a career-high strikeout rate, but that’s the last of the good news. He’s just not hitting his spots, and he’s allowing way too many hits. Normally Arrieta allows around six hits per nine innings, near best in the league. This year he’s at 9.6 hits per nine. He’s also allowed 11 homers, already above his Cubs average for the whole season, and his 10 wild pitches leads the league. There’s a bit of unlucky BABIP in there but that defintiely doesn’t tell the whole story. Arrieta just hasn’t been the same since his magical 2015 season. He’ll be 32 at the start of next season and his contract is up this winter. It may take a miracle at this point to imagine him in Cubs pinstripes next summer.

Bullpen

Just like everyone expected, the bullpen has saved the Cubs season so far. Wade Davis and Carl Edwards have been nearly untouchable, both deserving of every All Star nod or accolade. Strop, Rondon, and Uehara have also been terrific and done everything we could have hoped for. Any close game or lead is in good hands. Think the Cubs feel good about trading Jorge Soler for Wade Davis? He gets a $25k bonus if he makes the All Star Game. He’s going to get a lot more than that next winter.

Mike Montgomery and Brian Duensing continue to be incredibly valuable in the middle innings. Those two have pitched 57 innings combined, about as many as Kyle Hendricks, with a combined 2.68 ERA. Collectively, they’re the real “fifth starter.” Montgomery’s strikeout and walk rates have been pretty disappointing, almost 20% walks against righties in particular, while Duensing has been fantastic with a 29/6 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Those two have dug the Cubs out of repeated early holes but holding a finger in the dam long enough for the bats to come around.

Big Picture Conclusions

1. There’s good reason to believe most of the hitters can’t get much worse and should only trend up

Only Baez, Heyward, Jay, and Montero are really outperforming expectations so far. Just about every other bat should be trending upward moving forward, and those veterans just mentioned (other than Baez) may be stable anyways. Cubs bats should heat up into the summer. Chicago is still really young. Schwarber, Almora, and Happ are basically rookies, and even guys like Rizzo and Heyward that feel old by comparison are still only 27. Zobrist is still good at 36 if you’re wondering how long those players can last. These hitters have literally a decade to figure this out.

2. Chicago’s depth has been great but the heart of the lineup needs another big bat or two

The Cubs feature four everyday players out of eight that are notably defense-first guys right now in Heyward, Russell, Baez, and Contreras. Right now Russell and Contreras are closer to defense-only. Those four players are all very good, definite everyday starters, but the team is struggling to score enough runs. It’s possible Russell, Baez, and Contreras never really develop into top hitters. That’s okay but it means the Cubs really need big bats in left or center field to go along with Bryant and Rizzo. Right now it’s a bunch of platoon guys instead. It could be that Chicago needs to sign or trade for a big outfield bat at some point if Schwarber doesn’t work out.

3. The Cubs’ depth can help them against lefties but the righty struggles are piling up

Guys like Schwarber and Zobrist have been terrible against LHP but can just sit the pine in those games while guys like Almora or Jay are out there. That’s not a big problem. But Rizzo, Russell, and Contreras are really struggling against RHP and those are all everyday players that have to be out there. That’s the heart of the lineup, and of course righties are out there far over half the time so that’s become a real problem so far in 2017.

4. A year after having seven All Stars, Kris Bryant and Wade Davis are the only surefire All Stars

And bullpen picks are tricky, so even Davis is not a lock. Chicago fans could elect guys like Rizzo or Russell to the team anyway, but neither deserves the spot right now, and none of the starting pitchers do either. Carl Edwards and Jason Heyward are probably next in line for All-Star berths, but it’d be surprising to see either of them in Miami.

5. The Cubs are still walking a lot but striking out more than ever

The average walk rate so far is 8.8% per plate appearance. Every single Cubs hitter is above that number except for Almora (around 7%) and Baez, who isn’t even close. Even when Chicago isn’t hitting, they’re putting guys on base. But the strikeouts are really piling up too, a problem with such a young team. Schwarber, Russell, Baez, and Contreras have been particularly bad, not altogether shocking considering they’re all still 25 and under. The strikeouts hurt though. They mean fewer pitches and not enough guys on base, plus fewer chances to take advantage of the team’s base running strengths.

6. The starting pitchers have been mostly fine but it might be time to trade for that young controlled pitcher

Lester, Hendricks, and Lackey have been fine. They’re not winning games single handedly but aren’t usually losing them either. Arrieta is at times, and it seems clear he’s not a long-term solution. So with that in mind, it probably makes sense to make a move for another pitcher sooner than later if there’s a long-term fit out there. It feels like Happ is still most likely to go, though a Baez sell-high could make sense or maybe the team is ready to give up on Schwarber (not likely).

7. Alomst everything about the team has been “fine.”

The Cubs aren’t really bad, they’re just not the great team we watched a year ago yet. The hitters are okay. The pitchers have been alright. The team has been fine. But keep in mind that most other teams with so many individuals struggling would be five or ten games below .500 with a big hole to dig out of. The Cubs are a game out of first with 107 games to play, and that is the ultimate “fine.” Only Kris Bryant and the bullpen have really stood out and that’s still been good enough. Rizzo will get going again, some of the young bats will come around, a pitcher or two will get hot, Theo will make a trade or two. “Fine” is the 2017 Cubs version of bad, and fine should turn to better and then good again soon enough. Until then, fine is just fine with me.

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