Kyle Schwarber’s demotion is the right move — and long overdue

SHARE Kyle Schwarber’s demotion is the right move — and long overdue
688379262_69077754.jpg

(Photo by Jon Durr/Getty Images)

Was the slump the result of the odd, ill-fated decision to bat him leadoff? A bad World Series hangover? A delayed sophomore slump? Too many endorsement deals? A mechanical issue with his swing? A mental block?

All of it?

None of it?

That’s the problem with Kyle Schwarber: Nobody knows the problem.

What we do know is that the Cubs finally did something about it Thursday, demoting him to Class AAA Iowa, a move that should have been made a month ago. His .171 batting average only hints at how lost he has been at the plate this season.

There is no shame in being sent down. It should be a relief to the 24-year-old. There has been too much concern for the message it might send to a young player who had made such a huge splash in his short time in the big leagues. He was a big reason the Cubs did so well the past two postseasons, including during last season’s World Series run.

But being good in the past and likable always were never good reasons to keep him at the major-league level, where he could fight himself in front of 40,000 people every night. The Cubs treated him like a veteran, even though he came into the season with just 71 regular-season games under his belt. That wasn’t fair to him.

He hit .204 in April, .120 in May and was hitting .196 in June. There was never a hint he was close to breaking out of his slump. Manager Joe Maddon finally took Schwarber out of the leadoff spot May 21 and put him in his air lotto-ball lineup machine, where he got motion sickness like everybody else. Then Maddon stopped hitting the left-handed Schwarber against left-handed pitchers. It was like watching a snowman melt. Finally, with nowhere left to hide him, the Cubs made the right move, the responsible move, the merciful move.

Schwarber has been wonderful in the postseason, smacking five home runs in the 2015 playoffs and hitting .412 in the 2016 playoffs after missing all but two games of the regular season because of injury. It’s now the stuff of legend. The regular-season stuff is a lot trickier.

In 2015, Schwarber’s rookie season, he hit .246 with 16 home runs, 36 walks and 77 strikeouts in 69 games. This year, he was hitting .171 with 12 home runs, 36 walks and 75 strikeouts in 64 games. Cubs president Theo Epstein insists Schwarber’s history, including college and minor-league ball, proves that his batting average this season is an aberration. But everything else in that two-season comparison looks the same, including the high number of strikeouts. Let’s agree that the sample size is too small at this point in his career to come to any definitive conclusion.

Before Schwarber’s demotion, the Twitterverse would swoon whenever he hit a long home run this season. And it was filled with people talking about his excellent batting average on balls in play, which is sort of like having an excellent driving record not counting the times you crashed your car.

This is what happens when people fall in love with a player. They look for things to pitch a tent by rather than the right thing to do. And not just fans, but managers and executives too. We all like the idea of Kyle Schwarber: humble kid with folklore power who helped the Cubs win a World Series. Maybe we like the idea of him too much, to his detriment.

Again, I don’t know if Maddon’s decision to bat Schwarber leadoff caused the kid’s 12-week bad dream. But you can’t tell last season’s leadoff hitter, Dexter Fowler, “You go, we go’’ and then pretend the leadoff spot isn’t that important by leaving Fowler’s struggling successor in there for seven weeks. No matter what Maddon says, all eyes are on the first guy to bat in the first inning. They just are, and it can be daunting for some players.

So now Schwarber heads to Des Moines, where he can try to figure out what’s wrong in relative obscurity. It’s a good thing. It’s a lot easier to work on your swing against a Class AAA pitcher than it is against Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg, whom the Cubs could face in Washington next week.

Part of Maddon’s job is to believe in his players. It’s in Epstein’s job description, too. But the bigger job is to win games now and later. The Cubs have been a .500 team most of the season. Perhaps Maddon is right that the Cubs are one big August winning streak from heading into the playoffs as a dangerous defending World Series champion. But June games matter, too, as do the ones in April and May.

Would the Cubs be in a better place if the organization had come to Schwarber’s rescue earlier?

The answer is the same as the one to so many questions this season: Who knows?


The Latest
Despite getting into foul trouble, which limited him to just six minutes in the second half, Shannon finished with 29 points, five rebounds and two assists.
Cowboy hats, bell-bottoms and boots were on full display Thursday night as fans lined up for the first of his three sold-out shows.
The incident occurred about 3:40 p.m. near Minooka. The horse was successfully placed back into the trailer, and the highway reopened about 40 minutes later. No injuries were reported.
The Hawks conceded the game’s only two goals within the first seven minutes and were shut out for the 12th time this season in a 2-0 defeat Thursday.