Kyle Schwarber on demotion: ‘I’m not going to back down — trust me’

DES MOINES, Iowa — Kyle Schwarber knows he can’t argue with the Cubs’ decision last week to send him here to AAA Iowa.

A .171 batting average, .673 OPS and strikeout rate of 28.7 this season wasn’t going to keep the 24-year-old lefty slugger at the major league level forever.

“The numbers spoke for themselves,” he said Monday, a couple of hours before he was to hit third and start in left field against the New Orleans Baby Cakes. “Obviously, you don’t ever want to come back down here. But it’s an opportunity to relax, get back to being myself and try to get back up [with the Cubs].”

Any concerns about how difficult that might be to do?

“I ain’t a guy to back down from the challenge,” he said. “I’m not going to back down at all — trust me.”

The former 2014 first-round draft pick last played at the AAA level for 17 games in 2015, before his big splash in the big leagues that included five home runs in that year’s postseason. Schwarber’s first game back in Iowa comes after the Cubs gave him 72 hours to get himself ready to begin chasing the dream anew. He spent the first two days in Chicago, then arrived in Des Moines on Sunday and got in some work with Cubs minor league hitting coordinator Andy Haines.

“A demotion’s a demotion,” Schwarber said. “It’s something you don’t ever want to happen. It ticks you off a little bit, but you also can’t press [or] anything like that to try to make things happen. You’ve got to go back to what made you successful.”

But Schwarber’s success in 2015 was mitigated by a prolonged slump; from August 1 through the end of that regular season, he hit just .216. A major knee injury cost him nearly the entire 2016 campaign, though his comeback for the World Series — in which he hit .412 — only added to the hype that has surrounded him since he first flashed his awesome power for Cubs fans.

And now 2017 has been one big disappointment so far. Where does Schwarber see himself if he can put things together?

“I want to be one of the best in the game,” he said. “This is just a step. This game is always a continuous learning curve. I learn something new every day in baseball. I want to be one of the best out there. I want to help the Cubs get back to the championship.”

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Email: sgreenberg@suntimes.com