Chicago Cubs: Checking in on the Kyle Schwarber leadoff experiment

Through his first 30 games this year, Kyle Schwarber has not redefined the leadoff position as expected.

A little over a month into the 2017 regular season and Kyle Schwarber has proved to be more Willie Mays Hays (without the speed) than Willie Mays. His installation as the leadoff hitter for the Cubs has not brought an influx of power to the top of the order. Schwarber has batted .198/.321/.379 in his first 30 games with 42 strikeouts and only 11 extra-base hits. This is not the start the Cubs had envisioned for their World Series hero.

Although he missed the entire 2016 regular season with a knee injury, the Cubs felt Schwarber could handle the pressure of leading off for the defending World Series champs. Leading off isn’t for everyone, and the role can cause hitters to change their approach, sacrificing power for contact or becoming too complacent early in the count while trying to draw a walk. Schwarber was picked to lead off for the Cubs because of his ability to change the game with a single swing.

With Schwarber’s unsightly 30.5 percent strikeout rate so far this season that simply making contact would be his biggest issue. Quite the opposite, in fact. Schwarber has made contact at a 75.8 percent rate this season according to PITCHf/x. That is significantly better than his rookie year when he made contact on only 67.6 percent of his swings. Schwarber has also shaved three percentage points off his chase rate this year while also raising his contact rate on those borderline pitches by over ten percent. His plate discipline and bat skills are not to blame for the slow start — he just does not profile as an overmatched rookie who missed an entire season and has only 100 MLB games under his belt.

Putting the bat on the ball has not been the problem for Schwarber. Striking out isn’t really the problem either. The Cubs were prepared to accept plenty of whiffs from Schwarber as long as his power matched. The Minnesota Twins have no problem with Miguel Sano striking out in over a third of his plate appearances because he his slugging .667. On the other hand, the Twins should have a problem with Byron Buxton and his 36.4 percent strikeout rate and .244 slugging percentage.

Schwarber should be much more Sano than Buxton, but why haven’t the results matched his NFL-linebacker body type?

The struggles of the big left fielder so far this year are really a difficult puzzle to piece together? We have already established that making contact isn’t his issue. Plate discipline is not a problem, either. It’s quite impressive that Schwarber has been able to carry an OBP over .300 while batting below the Mendoza Line. His BA-OBP differential is on par with elites like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper.

It is possible that seeing so many extra pitches has hampered Schwarber’s ability to hit for power. He has reached two strikes in 77 of his 125 plate appearances, batting .075/.195/.104 in those at-bats. Schwarber has also only put nine first pitches into play this year. It does not appear as though he is watching too many strikes.

Schwarber has actually gotten himself into more advantageous 2-0 counts this year than his MVP teammate Kris Bryant. After those 2-0 counts, Schwarber and Bryant have been about equal. It’s the two-strike counts that seem to make the difference so far. Bryant has an OPS of .665 with two strikes, while Schwarber is all the way down at .299. Bryant has managed to put up strong numbers after 1-2 and 2-2 counts, but Schwarber is batting well below .100 in both situations.

Bryant and Schwarber both strike out at a decent clip, but why is Bryant gapping him by such a wide margin when it comes to actually producing with two strikes?

The answer may lie in the type of contact Schwarber has settled for this season. His average exit velocity of 87.37 mph is slightly below the MLB baseline of 87.74 mph. He has also hit more ground balls than fly balls, and has made hard contact only 28.6 percent of the time, which is down 11 percentage points from his rookie season in 2015.

Let’s take a look at Schwarber’s spray charts, courtesy of Daren Willman and Baseball Savant, from this season and his debut in 2015. First, this season.

And now, 2015.

The impressive thing about Schwarber’s rookie season was that he showed immediate power to all fields. Just look at how his home runs are spread out all around the outfield. This year, his pulled contact has been kept on the ground for the most part with too many lazy flies to left field. Schwarber has been utterly befuddled by the slider and changeup this year, batting below .100 with nine strikeouts. He hasn’t even been able to handle the four-seam fastball, and is hitting .184 against the standard heater with a .368 slugging percentage.

Schwarber’s exit velocity has been in a gradual decline as the quality of his contact weakens.

The problem with Schwarber seems to be his increased desire to pull the ball. Hitters in a slump, especially power hitters, can get pull happy when they are looking for better results. That appears to be what is happening with Schwarber. When he was hot in the World Series last year, everything off his bat was right back up the middle. Now, as he sells out to pull the ball, his bat drags through the zone against anything on the outer half of the plate, leading to weak fly balls to left field or whiffs against secondary pitches.

In his rookie season in 2015, Schwarber batted .246 with 77 strikeouts in 69 games. He still drew plenty of walks but was not exactly setting the world on fire with hard contact against breaking balls and offspeed pitches. He seems to have elite pitch tracking and recognition skills (no doubt made better by watching thousands of pitches a day while rehabbing his knee), but his actual contact skills have not caught up. The left fielder is not handling any part of the strike zone well this year — not even his happy zones of 2015.

Lost in the legend of Schwarber in the postseason is the fact that he played in only 17 games at Triple-A before being summoned to the big leagues and only 58 at Double-A. Those are the two levels where it becomes more important to hit sliders and changeups. Schwarber was tearing up the minor leagues when the Cubs brought him up for the first time but was still striking out close to once per game. It should not have been such a surprise to see him get off to a slow start in 2017 after missing almost an entire year of live-action at-bats.

Schwarber is still an extremely gifted hitter who will figure it out with time. As his slump deepens, the Cubs should consider giving him a reprieve from leading off while he works through the kinks in his swing. Over in the American League, Greg Bird, who also impressed in 2015 before missing all of last season, was off to a .100/.250/.200 start before landing on the disabled list. Like Schwarber, he is playing catchup after missing valuable at-bats.

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Joe Maddon is one of the smartest managers in baseball. His offense is not in gear, and his leadoff hitter’s swing is coming apart at the seams. Maddon has tried giving Schwarber days off to clear his head, but it may be time to consider letting him work out his troubles in the lower third of the order. Schwarber will be an elite power hitter thanks to his ability to recognize pitches early, but being thrown to the fire as the leadoff hitter may have been too much too soon.