Nationals All-Star Kyle Schwarber was one of the first dominos to fall for the Cubs’ core of World Series players, and he probably won’t be the last.
Among the first moves for newly appointed Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer this past offseason was cutting a key member of the team’s core, Kyle Schwarber.
Rather than pay Schwarber an estimated ~$8 million for one season, what he would have made in his final year of arbitration, Chicago opted to let him walk away for nothing in return. As it turns out he’s having a career-year, posting 25 home runs (4th-MLB) and a .910 OPS just prior to suffering a hamstring injury.
If only the Cubs agreed to an arbitration deal, they’d likely get a big bang for their buck at the upcoming July 30 trade deadline. Regardless, it’s all hindsight, and now Chicago has played into a selling position for the upcoming weeks.
Schwarber will never have to buy a drink on the North Side of Chicago thanks to his heroics during the 2016 World Series. He missed all but two regular season games after tearing his ACL in April of that season, and returned to DH and pinch hit in the Fall Classic. Schwarber showed up in a big way for the Cubs, posting a .412/.500/.471 slash line with two RBIs in 20 plate appearances in that seven-game series against Cleveland.
What he did to help deliver the Cubs their first championship in 108 years is special, and the same can be said for his former teammates who are in the midst of all the trade speculation: Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, Anthony Rizzo, and Willson Contreras.
Kyle Schwarber comments on Cubs trade rumors
When asked if it would hurt to see his former teammates moved at the deadline, Schwarber told the Chicago Sun-Times he has no doubt they’ll continue to play well.
"“Yeah, man, it kind of would,” he said. “But you know what? I don’t even worry about the guys. I know that the fans will be hurt, probably, but this is the business side of baseball. I got a taste of the business side of baseball, too. But the guys, who are my friends, they’re going to be just fine. They’re going to be great baseball players wherever they go, and I think that’s the biggest thing.”"
The idea with the group was that they’d deliver multiple championships as the next dynasty in baseball. It didn’t work out that way, but it’s among one of the hardest feats to accomplish in any level of professional sports and shouldn’t take away from their accomplishments.
"“It wasn’t like we were satisfied we won the World Series,” Schwarber said. “We wanted to keep going. . . .But those guys there? The guys the Cubs might not keep? They did really good, special things in Chicago and made Chicago baseball a hot commodity. I think people get caught up in ‘we should’ve won more World Series.’ Look at the Dodgers: They just won their first one. These guys did special things in Chicago, and it was damn fun for me to be a part of it.”"
You’d be hard to find any Cubs fans who will say that championship in 2016 wasn’t the greatest moment in their fandom. They wouldn’t trade it for anything.
The last seven years of Cubs baseball has featured four-straight 90-plus win seasons, three division titles, three NLCS appearances, and a World Series victory. It’s been by far the Golden Era in the history of the 100-plus year franchise that was known as the “Lovable Losers” for a long time.
Even if this is the end for guys like Bryant, Baez, Contreras, and Rizzo, what they did for this team and city will forever go down as some of the best players to put on a Cubs uniform.