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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After getting swept by the New York Yankees and losing two out of three to the Colorado Rockies, the Chicago Cubs are now sitting on a .500 record. By run differential or BaseRuns expected performance, tools that strip out sequencing, the answer is the same; the Cubs have played pretty much like a .500 team. The offense has been a little worse than average, the pitching a little better than average, but overall, the team has played roughly like an 81 win team so far.

Of course, this isn’t what recent Cubs teams have played like.

In 2015 and 2016, Cubs starters topped all of Major League Baseball with 36.3 WAR, just ahead of the Nationals, Mets, and Dodgers. The starters’ 3.50 FIP, without even considering the impact of defense or the potential of inducing weak contact, has been the best in the majors. The Cubs have returned almost all of last year’s staff intact, with Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta, Kyle Hendricks present for each of the past two seasons and John Lackey around last year.

The question we are trying to answer here is what is responsible for the downturn in results. We are just 34 games into the season, so we could chalk it up to luck. We could try to determine if the talent level has changed in any way, which might cause us to lower our expectations, and we could point to some outside factors that aren’t luck, but aren’t necessarily the responsibility of the pitchers, like defense. To frame our understanding of what is going on, it probably helps to create some expectations of what we would expect to see from a Cubs rotation this season. While Brett Anderson has made six starts, he’s only pitched 12% of the Cubs starter innings, and little was expected of him, so we will focus on the four returnees. Read the rest of this entry »

Consider, for a moment, Kyle Schwarber. If you saw him in street clothes and were told that he’s a professional athlete, you would assume that he’s a football player. A linebacker, perhaps. Some sort of bruiser with the job of clobbering other players.

Schwarber’s job is not to clobber other players, however, but rather to clobber baseballs. He’s quite good at that. This year, however, has been something of a struggle for the goateed one. Last night’s 0-for-4 showing sent Schwarber under the Mendoza line and dropped his batting line to an unsightly 79 wRC+. It’s early yet, and Schwarber has just 115 plate appearances to his name so far this season, but this is decidedly not what the Cubs want from their leadoff hitter and one of their biggest (literally and figuratively) sluggers.

Joe Maddon’s usage of Schwarber in the leadoff spot is predicated upon Schwarber’s theoretical ability to get on base. To be fair, he’s done an admirable job in that. Rocking a .322 OBP with a .196 average isn’t easy at all. Getting some more hits will make that OBP go up even more, though, and Schwarber (or any hitter, for that matter) is at his best when he’s crushing the ball into the next time zone.

We know Schwarber can still do that. Exhibit A:

Schwarber hasn’t had a real chance for prolonged big-league time just yet. He played in 69 games when he first came up, and then lost nearly all of last season to his devastating knee injury. Despite his talents and his exploits in the postseason, we don’t yet have an idea of what a full season’s worth of Schwarber really looks like. We’ve got 393 regular-season plate appearances with which to work, though. So let’s poke around a bit.

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PITTSBURGH — Nearly 20 years ago, in the back yard of his half-acre lot in suburban Las Vegas, Mike Bryant completed what has became a crucial construction project for his family and the Chicago Cubs. Foundational holes were dug, and concrete was poured, to support three metal frames from which nylon netting was draped. The result: a spartan batting cage within feet of his home.

Kris Bryant often waited until the evenings, when his father had completed his private hitting instruction, to enter the cage.

“We had some lights that weren’t very good, but they did the job,” said Bryant of evening hitting sessions. “[The cage] was just a net and some dirt on the ground. The net had holes everywhere. You’d be hitting baseballs across the street and into other houses… But I was fortunate to have it at my finger tips and swing whenever I wanted. Other guys had to go to a local batting cage and find time to hit.”

Bryant hit balls across the street and against neighbors’ homes because he hit the ball in the air. In the cage, Mike Bryant taught his son to elevate the ball. He would create targets in the upper part of the netting and challenge Bryant to direct the ball there. The targets were always raised above the ground.

“It would be like, ‘Try to hit in the back right-hand corner of the cage. Try to hit it right there.’ It’s almost something I practiced when I was younger and didn’t know,” said Bryant of his uppercut plane. “Being young, you are not as focused on your swing, you are just out there hitting. But my dad would do certain games in the cage where I would hit targets in the air and I would practice it.”

While it’s probably unnecessary to remind our loyal readers that we’ve written often about the fly-ball revolution at FanGraphs this offseason and spring, you can read some of our musings here, here, and here.

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Previously
Changeup: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Curveball: AL Starters / NL Starters.

Our series focusing on the evaluation of 2016 ERA-qualifying starters’ pitches grinds on. Today, we kill a couple of birds with one stone, with a look at the best cutters and splitters from both leagues.

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There’s something odd about the Cubs’ starting rotation, and I wrote about it last week. All five pitchers have been working with reduced velocity, relative to where they were last season. When it happens to one guy, it’s a potential problem. When it happens to five guys…I suppose it’s a potential *huge* problem, but it’s also a potentially deliberate pattern. I speculated as much, offering that the Cubs might be trying to back off their main arms since they’re coming off an extended season, and preparing for another.

Jake Arrieta has been okay, reduced velocity or not. The same goes for Jon Lester, who looks like the same pitcher. However, it’s a different story when it comes to Kyle Hendricks. Like the other starters, Hendricks isn’t throwing as hard as he used to. But then, Hendricks is sitting on a 6+ ERA. He specialized in command and soft contact. Now he has worse command, and he’s allowing hard contact. As far as Hendricks is concerned, something seems awry, although it looks to me to be mechanical.

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Position: Chicago Cubs Baseball Systems Web Developer

Location: Chicago

Description:
This role will primarily focus on the development and maintenance of the Cubs internal baseball information system, including creating web interfaces and web tools for the user interface; building ETL (exact, transform and load) processes; maintaining back-end databases; and troubleshooting data sources issues as needed. The Chicago Cubs are an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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Sometimes baseball is good, and sometimes baseball is bad, but always, baseball is weird. It can be weird because a player gets hit by pitches in four plate appearances in a row. It can be weird because a game ends with a strikeout, and then everyone celebrates, and then the umpire decides the pitch the batter missed wasn’t actually missed after all, even though it clearly and totally was, and then the game awkwardly resumes and ends with a strikeout a second time. And it can be weird because a guy like Kyle Hendricks walks a guy like Tommy Milone on a number like four pitches. There’s always this undercurrent of weird, and from time to time it bursts to the surface like a baseball-y geyser.

Think about what we have here. This event just took place earlier Wednesday afternoon. Kyle Hendricks is the pitcher people have loved to compare to Greg Maddux. At times, the comparison hasn’t even seemed all that crazy, and Maddux could use a bucket of baseballs to go hummingbird hunting. Tommy Milone, meanwhile, is and will forever be Tommy Milone, and not only is Tommy Milone a pitcher, but he’s also a pitcher you might not have even realized was still pitching in the majors. He is! Although, this afternoon, he was both pitching and hitting. As a hitter, he walked on four pitches, against Kyle Hendricks. OK.

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