Don’t Expect Schwarber to be Traded – Or Anyone Really

The hot stove seems to of finally started. Since Friday, the Chicago Cubs have signed Tyler Chatwood and Brandon Morrow. The deals seem pale in comparison to the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Angels, but they were important moves making the team better. The team’s emphasis was on adding pitching this winter, and they are successfully doing just that.

One would figure the Cubs have two or three more moves to make this offseason. One, add another starting pitcher and secondly, add a couple relievers.

Adding a pitcher

The question now turns to how the Cubs will add those pitchers? At the beginning of the offseason, Theo Epstein sounded reserved to having to trade someone from the 25-man roster. With the team’s current makeup, and what is available, I don’t think this is the case any longer. The cost verse return is no longer there, especially when the team can throw money at the need. Why trade away a valuable, young, cost-controlled player(s) when all the team needs to do is sign a check? Especially at a price point that they can afford.

With the Cubs signing Tyler Chatwood on Friday, you would figure there is roughly $35-$45 million of an additional budget. The Cubs want to keep about $15 million for July deals, making high-priced free agents unlikely. Meaning, it’s extremely unlikely that the Cubs will resign Jake Arrieta. The two sides will likely meet again, but that’s because the two sides have genuine respect for each other. But at the end of the day the money doesn’t work out, and the years just doesn’t work out.

Good news, the market is still rich with starting pitching. While Arrieta and Yu Darvish are the biggest names on the market, that next tier is packed with quality arms. That is the pool that we all expect the Cubs to shop from. The Alex Cobb, the Lance Lynn, the Andrew Cashner, or the Jaime Garcia’s of the world can all fit the Cubs need. Those arms will all cost between $13 and $16 million a season, and command three to four-year deals.

Three to four-year contracts line up perfectly for the Cubs. 2021 is when the Cubs will have to start lining up deals for their young core. It is also when some of the young arms in the Cubs minor leagues will be pushing for big league innings. Perfectly lined up for when the costs of the team will shift from pitching to position players.

Kyle

All of this starts to build the case as to why the Cubs won’t look to trade Kyle Schwarber – or anyone for that matter.

When I was a kid and collected baseball cards I would go to card shows looking to buy, sell, or trade. As a kid one of the more collectible types of cards were subsets. These were cards that were rarer than the regular set of cards, often having a neat overlay or foil or even sometimes jersey cutouts. I would try to collect the full set on as many of those subsets as possible, and some card shops or dealers would try and take advantage of that. One such time was when I was trying to complete the “Rookie Sensation” set from Fleer. Luckily, I had pulled two of Frank Thomas’ Rookie Sensation cards, as well as a Phil Plantier and Chuck Knoblauch cards. These were three top cards in the set at the time.

I had sold one of the Frank Thomas cards for way too much money, which I turned around and bought a box of the 1992 Fleer cards. In that box, I pulled another Thomas card and all but two of the remaining “Rookie Sensations.” I wanted to complete that subset, and the local card shop wanted to take one of the Frank Thomas cards in order to do that. Since I had the money and knew I could bank on selling that other Thomas card the next weekend, I kept the card and just bought the remaining cards.

This is a similar position that the Cubs find themselves in. They could trade away Schwarber and get a pitcher or they could use the cash they have available. On top of it, teams know the Cubs covet young, controlled pitching. Knowing this the other teams in the league will ask for the Cubs to overpay for their return.

The Stats

We all know how horrific Kyle Schwarber’s 2017 started. By the end of June Kyle had a .173/.297/.401 slash line with a .698 OPS. After June Kyle hit .257/.337/.573 with a .910 OPS. The final three months are incredibly impressive. Maybe you would like a higher average. Or maybe you expect him to reach base more often, completely reasonable requests. But a .910 OPS shows he gets on enough, and of course that power potential too.

I know it is cliche, but Kyle also spent a full offseason strengthening his leg. When you would want a young player to spend the offseason getting better at his craft, Kyle was rehabbing. This set him back both offensively and defensively. Then the cherry on top is, he had 278 MLB plate appearances coming into 2017. Likewise, he only had 620 MiLB plate appearances. He hadn’t seen everything a pitcher would try to do against him. He hasn’t needed to go through multiple adjustments in a season. He didn’t have that large bank of information on what a fastball looks like from certain pitchers.

We, as fans, see guys like Kris Bryant and Bryce Harper and Mike Trout come up and take the league by storm. But for each of those guys, there is a player like Anthony Rizzo that struggles through three seasons before things really click. Why is it so hard to believe that Schwarber might need a couple of years for things to click?

My guess would be his ridiculous playoff performances, but us fans should temper our expectations with young players.

But what about that defense though!?

People who want Kyle traded always point to his defense. Like seriously, always. And, yeah, Kyle isn’t the most fleet of foot defender. I know watching games I always worry when there is a line drive hit Kyle’s way. It is tough to watch him back-peddle on a ball as well.

The thing is, his defense is a lot better than you think it is. Pulling up the defensive metrics on Fangraphs (ahem, link) the numbers are rather favorable of Kyle’s defense. Sure a lot of it was in reduced time, but there is as much of a chance for negative plays to sway metrics as positive plays do.

The first thing I see is Kyle has the second best arm in left, behind Marcell Ozuna. I think even Schwarber detractors would agree that Kyle has a strong arm. This comes from him being a catcher. Another tool he carries over from being a backstop is his good pop time. Kyle is one of the fastest at getting the ball out of his hands, which lends to his overall arm rating from Fangraphs.

Defense is a lot tougher to gauge than just looking at how many errors someone has. There are a lot of factors that come into play when grading a player’s defensive capabilities. So far the best tool available is UZR and UZR/150. UZR is a rating that compares what happened (hit/catch/error) to similarly hit balls. That is used to determine how well a player rates against an average fielder. UZR/150 basically stretches that play out across 150 games.

In 2017 Schwarber was rated the seventh left fielder according to UZR, and sixth best according to UZR/150.

With 15 teams in the NL, Schwarber sits around average. The Cubs can deal with an average left fielder with Albert Almora in centerfield, and Schwarber putting up a .850-.900 OPS.

Value

It seems like the Cubs understand Kyle’s value. They know that if they were to trade him this offseason, they would be selling low. I personally don’t think the Cubs ever seriously entertain trading Kyle. Unless a team blows them away with an offer, Kyle will likely be a Cub for a long while.

Theo on teams calling about Schwarber: He’s always been someone that teams have an interest in, I guess. But we have probably the most interest.

— Sahadev Sharma (@sahadevsharma) December 12, 2017

I’m not even sure what a deal would look like that would blow the Cubs away? I know teams aren’t calling the Cubs to give up their best young, cheap, starting pitchers. Even if the Cubs picked up the phone, opposing teams aren’t bending over backward for Kyle right now. Sure they all know his potential. They know his power potential. But you know they will recite the same things some fans recite in fan pages on Facebook. Can’t hit consistently. Strikes out too much. He’s only a DH.

So the Cubs have a guy with incredible offensive potential but will be hard-pressed to trade for equal value. Why would the Cubs sell low on a guy like that? Theo and Jed Hoyer haven’t gotten to where they are at by selling low on their talent.

Any trade?

As far as any of their young players, why would the Cubs trade them at this point?

If they can fill the remaining pitching spots through free agency, why trade an offensive player to do it? With a team that scored 822 runs why lose potential offensive production in a trade? Why would Theo handicap the offense to build the pitching staff, when he can keep the offense strong and improve the pitching with money?

What is best is, spending money doesn’t have the same negative connotation as it did before Theo was here. In the past, the Cubs would throw bad money at guys like Henry Rodriguez or Milton Bradley. Throwing multimillion dollar band-aids on their problems.

In 2017 the contracts aren’t band-aids, but strategic pieces to a large puzzle which only Theo and Jed have the corner pieces for. They aren’t overpaying for past performance, they are carefully selecting players that have yet to give their best. Guys like Tyler Chatwood, guys like Brandon Morrow, and perhaps a guy like Alex Cobb. These are guys that will add to the brilliant offense the Cubs will likely have.

If you ask me, I’d rather pay for a sandwich that hasn’t already been eaten. I’d also hate to trade a bag of Sun Chips for a new sandwich when I can toss a five spot and have my chips and sandwich too.