On June 3rd of this year, with the Cardinals leading 2-1 in the fifth inning and Tommy Pham on first with two outs, Jon Lester quickly took his left foot off the Wrigley Field pitching rubber and lobbed a throw over to first baseman Anthony Rizzo.

Pham, who had taken a 19-foot lead, was picked off first base to end the inning on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Chicago.

While the play seemed rather ordinary, it wasn’t. The pickoff was highly unusual because it was Lester’s first successful pickoff since 2015 and just his third since 2012. It was meaningful because, entering this year, Lester had all but stopped throwing to first — or in any direction other than home plate — because of the psychological block referred to as the “yips” in athletic parlance.

Lester declined to address the play afterward telling reporters: “Whatever… I just try and get outs.’’

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Pedro Gonzalez, CF, Colorado (Profile)
Level: Short Season  Age: 19   Org Rank: 7   Top 100: NR
Line: 4-for-5, 2B, BB, SB, CS
Notes
Gonzalez spent much of extended spring training in the Dominican Republic. Colorado doesn’t have an AZL team, so Gonzalez went directly from the DR to Grand Junction, his second year at that affiliate. Because of this, it has been hard for clubs, even those who place a heavier priority on complex-level scouting, to get eyes on Gonzalez. He remains physically projectable at a lean, broad-shoulder 6-foot-5, 190, and he’s a plus runner under way.

His defensive instincts draw mixed reviews, but he has the speed to stay there and try to polish his routes over time. If he fills out, slows down, and has to move to a corner it probably means he’s grown into enough power to profile there, at which point it will become imperative that he quell his desire to chase breaking balls off the plate.

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It’s now been six years since Buster Posey lost most of the season due to a broken leg bone suffered in a home plate collision. Two years later, Major League Baseball adopted Rule 7.13 to deal with collisions at home plate, meaning we are now in the fourth year of the rule designed to prevent serious injuries like the one Posey suffered as well as limit the damaging effects of concussions. There are two parts to the rule, one for catchers and one for runners, and together, collisions at the plate have become pretty non-existent. That’s what makes Monday night’s collision–when Anthony Rizzo barreled down the line into Austin Hedges–notable. It’s now a rarity, but Rizzo’s play was in clear violation of the rule.

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The Cubs, like all teams, are looking for an edge, for many edges.

The current front office began by focusing on position-player talent with premium draft picks, believing such prospects were safer bets to become impact major-league players. So far, so good.

When the world shifted three infielders to the right or left of second base, the Cubs started to shift less — and continue to do so. The result: one of the game’s most efficient defenses in recent history.

The club is interested in soft power, too. The Cubs have facilitated communication and collaboration between different departments — as have many other clubs — and better ways to facilitate cooperation. One way might be through the game’s only round clubhouse.

The Cubs, in brief, have exhibited a number of ways to get ahead.

July 2 marks the beginning of the hard-cap era for international signings. It also marks another opportunity for the Cubs to get ahead. This year, teams will no longer be allowed to lavishly outspend bonus-pool limits. Teams like the Cubs will now face a penalty for exceeding pool limits, losing the ability to extend anything greater than a $300,000 bonus to an international player. The Cubs have exhibited some creativity in recent years, however, in their attempt to work around pool limits. They’re likely to continue to do so.

Now the Cubs have perhaps found another edge in their pursuit of talent: Mexico.

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For a guy with just 484 plate appearances, a 104 career wRC+, and 1.4 WAR, Kyle Schwarber gets talked about an awful lot. There are a lot of good reasons for that talk. He was part of a rejuvenation for the Cubs in 2015 that saw the team move from punching bag to NL force. He hit a massive home run in the National League Division Series that year. After missing almost the entire season and playoffs last season, he returned for just the World Series, during which he reached base in 10 out of 20 plate appearances. Those are some impressive feats for such a brief career.

But again, the regular-season numbers aren’t exceptional. Is it possible that Schwarber is overrated due to his performances in big moments? Maybe a tad. He is an offense-first corner outfielder who needs to hit a ton to be a really valuable player. The Cubs’ insistence on keeping him instead of trading him for a potential upgrade elsewhere might play into his perceived value versus actual value, as well. In either case, Schwarber was still a good hitter entering the 2017 season. Whatever his struggles so far, he probably still is a good hitter.

Right now, Schwarber is putting up poor batting numbers, including a .165/.286/.341 slash line and 70 wRC+ in 206 plate appearances. Those marks have rendered Schwarber something worse than replacement level so far this season. If the Cubs were running away with the division right now like they did last year, maybe Schwarber’s results get a bit less scrutiny. (Maybe. Of course, the struggles of Jason Heyward last year certainly drew a lot of attention.) It probably doesn’t help that Schwarber began the season in the leadoff spot, either. In any event, Schwarber’s results have been terrible. Before he makes major changes to his swing or his approach, however — or before the organization does something drastic — it’s probably worth exploring whether Schwarber’s just hit into a bit (or a lot) of bad luck due, simply, to hitting ’em where they are.

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It’s June 1st. The Cubs are supposed to be running away with the NL Central right now, like the Astros and Nationals are doing in their divisions. Instead, the defending champs are 25-27, in third place in the NL Central, and only a game up on the rebuilding Reds. For a team that was being hailed as a dynasty in the making, this isn’t how 2017 was supposed to go. So what’s the deal? Why did last year’s juggernaut turn into this year’s mediocrity?

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When you look up and see that the Athletics are in the midst of a two-game mid-week series against the Marlins in late May, you might suspect that the major-league baseball schedule is simply an exercise in randomness. At this point in the campaign, that’s actually sort of the case. The combination of interleague play and the random vagaries of an early-season schedule conspire to mean that your favorite team hasn’t had the same schedule as your least favorite team. Let’s try to put a number on that disparity.

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Yesterday, I published a post comparing and contrasting the virtues of a pair of NL left fielders, Kyle Schwarber and Aaron Altherr. They are pretty different kinds of players, but to this point, their career numbers are very similar, and I thought it was an interesting question to consider which of the two you’d rather have going forward.

At the end of the post, I included a series of three polls, asking you to select a range for your view of the future expected performance for both players, as well as asking you to pick which one you’d rather have going forward. The results of those polls should something very close to a down-the-middle split.

When it came down to pick a side, Schwarber won 54/46, so there’s a slight edge to the bat-first, longer track record guy, but it certainly wasn’t any kind of blowout. And when you look at the expected performance buckets, it seems that Schwarber’s slight edge comes down to perceived upside.

A plurality of voters picked the +2 to +3 WAR bucket for both players, with 49% of Altherr’s votes going in that category, compared to 48% of Schwarber’s. There was a pretty large block of you guys that agreed that these guys are both above-average players, but not quite reaching star levels.

The +3 to +4 WAR bucket was the second most common choice for both players, and here, Schwarber pulled ahead slightly, 34% to 30%. Then it was +1 to +2 WAR, with Altherr getting 14% of his votes in that bin versus 9% for Schwarber. +4 to +5 WAR went 6% to 4% for Schwarber, and then +5 or better went 3% to 2% for Schwarber.

So overall, 43% of voters saw Schwarber as a +3 WAR or better player, the legitimate star that he’s been hyped up to be since being taken #4 overall. Only 37% of voters saw Altherr at that same level, and those who weren’t willing to put him in that category didn’t shift to the +2 to +3 WAR category, but instead, saw him as a role player, a fringe starter, effectively not buying into his 2017 performance as a significant indicator of change.

Essentially, the votes indicate that, while similar, you guys see a slightly higher upside with Schwarber. I’m guessing some of those higher-upside votes came from the idea that a new team could use him at first base, and his defensive limitations in left field would go away if Anthony Rizzo wasn’t standing in his way of the position he’s likely best suited for. If you think Schwarber could play a reasonable 1B and hit at a 130 or 140 wRC+ level, then yeah, that +4 to +5 WAR level is definitely reachable.

Altherr’s path to stardom in left field is easier; he just has to hit at a 120 to 130 wRC+ level, and his athleticism should carry the rest of the skillset. But while it was close, it appears that a few more of you buy into Schwarber hitting at a higher level, or changing positions, than see Altherr hitting at that level.

You probably don’t need much of an introduction to Kyle Schwarber. His story has been told numerous times, and he gained legendary status through his late-season return from ACL surgery, hitting .412 in the World Series to help the Cubs end their 108-year World Series drought. Schwarber is probably one of the most well known young players in baseball.

Depending on how frequently you read FanGraphs, you may be aware of Aaron Altherr. Jeff wrote about him in March when he was having a strong spring, trying to earn more time than his slotted 4th outfielder job on the Phillies would give him, and I wrote about his breakout performance last week. But while Altherr has gotten some notice for his strong performance the last few weeks, he’s still a relatively obscure young outfielder.

But despite their significantly different levels of recognition, they may be more similar than their reputations would suggest. So today, I wanted to do something of a thought experiment, and gauge how our readership sees the pair, as of May 16th, 2017.

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When Jake Arrieta made his 2017 season debut, he raised a certain amount of alarm. Although he held the Cardinals to all of one single unearned run over six innings, his velocity was sharply down, and that never escapes an analyst’s notice. Arrieta, therefore, was immediately put on the watch list. The reasons, I’d say, were justifiable.

Arrieta just made his eighth start. As with his first, this one came in St. Louis. The good news? His velocity is coming back. Compared to that first game, Arrieta’s sinker bumped up by a tick and a half. The same thing happened with his curveball. His cutter jumped up even more. Joe Maddon said before he wasn’t worried about Arrieta’s zip, and now we’re seeing some more familiar readings. So much for that early-season panic.

Yet now there’s different early-season panic. Through his first eight games a year ago, Arrieta allowed a combined nine runs. This year, he’s allowed a combined 33. Arrieta’s sitting on a worse ERA than Jhoulys Chacin, and with the Cubs a game under .500, this, too, can’t escape notice. Arrieta doesn’t look like himself.

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