Cubs Willson Contreras Unfair Comparison to Kyle Schwarber
Willson Contreras has drawn comparisons to another Cubs slugger in the injured Kyle Schwarber. That comparison is unfair to Contreras.
On Friday night, Willson Contreras continued to bolster both his resume and his rapidly growing legend in Chicago by almost single handedly breaking the Cubs season-high four game losing streak. After blasting a two run homer, his third of the season, in his first at-bat–during what proved to be a four run first inning outburst from the Cubs—Contreras later came up with a tie-breaking knock in the seventh, putting his team ahead once more, this time for good.
It was Contreras’ first multi-hit game, but hardly his first big moment in a Cubs uniform. He introduced himself to the baseball world this past weekend by blasting the first pitch of his career into the fan-filled right-centerfield bleachers during a pinch hit appearance late in a nationally broadcast Sunday night game against the Pirates. He’s since grown his inaugural hit streak to six games and counting.
A catcher by trade, but a competitor by mold, he’s found himself playing first during the first two games of a four game set against the Marlins while Anthony Rizzo rests a stiff back. At twenty-four years old, armed with an amicable personality, a genuine passion for the game, and a desire to contribute in whatever manner required by the moment, he has endeared himself to teammates, the similarly fresh faced and the grizzled variety alike.
Cubs manager Joe Maddon has been thorough with his praise of the latest young Cubs phenom, pointing to a maturity that belies Contreras’ age. Following Friday night’s win the Cubs skipper said of Contreras’ early impact, “It’s like oxygen….It’s absolutely necessary, the life he’s brought to the group. He has been a catalyst the last several days.” Teammate Ben Zobrist added praise of the Cubs latest young star saying, “I know around here it’s kind of something everyone expects — how well these young guys play — but what he’s done his first week has been nothing short of amazing,”
With the 21st-century social media sports culture being what it is the inevitability of the comparisons to Kyle Schwarber’s impact on the 2015 Cubs season have been accelerated. After all, when was the last time consecutive seasons produced games that became known by a player’s name? (“The Kyle Schwarber game,” and “The Willson Contreras game”).
While the comparisons are surely premature they are also inaccurate, but for reasons that go beyond the seemingly easily identifiable similarities. For, while Kyle Schwarber’s mid-season emergence and subsequent display of prolific power catapulted him to a most a most deservingly revered status in Chicago, the circumstances surrounding Contreras, even if his play does end up comparing favorably with that of Schwarber’s, are entirely different.
Next: The differences
Most prominent amongst the distinctions is the very different, and more onerous path, Contreras has taken. Signed as an international free agent out of Venezuela, at the tender age of seventeen back in 2009, Contreras never had the comfort of having an organization invest a number four overall pick into his future.
He wasn’t completely without hype, as he was talented enough to garner an 850,000 signing bonus (the highest for any international signing for the Cubs that year), but such international purchases are of the dime a dozen commodity, of which only a select, unpredictable few later emerge as more valuable pieces.
In the early going, it didn’t appear as though Contreras was destined to be one of those lucky few. Through the end of 2014, he’d yet to make it out of A ball, having never compiled an .OPS higher than .679, and his development behind the dish was, despite a strong arm, shoddy at best, most likely due to the organization’s unwillingness to commit him to the position. The power the Cubs scouts had once foresaw developing was still yet to appear, and an inability to hit right handed pitching greatly hindered further promotions. Twice the Cubs left him exposed to the Rule 5 draft, and twice no other team bothered to pick him up.
It was only after his breakout season in 2015 that things began to change. People began to take notice after Contreras put together a dominant campaign at AA West Tennessee. By this point the power, capacity to hit righties, and the translation of athletic skill to defensive merit at the catcher position, all seemed to be arriving. Still, the sudden nature of his ascension led to mixed reviews. While the Cubs named him their 2015 Minor League Player of the Year, the various ranking systems were conflicted over what to do with him. After replicating last year’s success during the first few months at AAA Iowa this spring Contreras firmly established himself as an elite prospect, and the promotion to the big leagues, and all that has followed, has led some to forget his largely anonymous recent past.
“It’s like oxygen….It’s absolutely necessary, the life he’s brought to the group. He has been a catalyst the last several days.” -Cubs manager Joe Maddon, on his newest young player, Willson Contreras.
This isn’t to say Kyle Schwarber was anointed a sure thing from the outset. He was far from it. In fact, the Cubs taking him so highly, when so many had him type-cast as a future DH, left many around the league shaking their heads. However, Schwarber was, from Day 1, someone the Cubs saw as a huge piece of their future, even if they weren’t, and still aren’t, entirely sure how much catching will be in it.
Next: A question of position and offense
The previous point is indicative of another difference between the two young players. The Cubs clearly never wanted Schwarber to catch. The organization prizes their catchers’ ability to receive and frame pitches, be efficient with their footwork, and cerebral in their game planning with and management of the pitching staff. Schwarber was never the archetype of such a player, even if the Cubs brass was reportedly impressed by his insistence that he could ultimately persevere at this most demanding of positions.
Contreras, on the other hand, is made to catch, and the Cubs know it. They are grooming him to be the catcher of the future, even if they are currently just looking for ways to keep his bat in the lineup. His ability and willingness to be used in a roaming, versatile fashion should not be mistaken as the Cubs seeing his bat (and his glove for that matter) in the same way they view Schwarber’s (that being that the robust bat makes the subpar glove worth it). If anything is pushing Kyle Schwarber to a more permanent role in the Cubs outfield in 2017 and beyond it is Willson Contreras.
Perhaps the most important distinction of all has nothing to do with either of the two players being compared. Rather, the difference lies in the place the Cubs find themselves this season as opposed to last summer. When Kyle Schwarber arrived (he made a brief appearance as the team’s DH during a two-series interleague trip in June before his later call-up) on July 17th of last year the Cubs were 47-41, nine games in back of the Cardinals, and just a game ahead of the Giants for the NL’s second wild card spot.
The team’s third best hitter was Chris Coghlan, and one of their two main bats, Kris Bryant, was in the midst of the first major slump of his recently begun career (he hit .168 in June). Dexter Fowler had yet to get going, so much so that there was talk of demoting him to a fourth outfielder’s role. The likes of Ben Zobrist, Jason Heyward, and Javier Baez were not yet a part of the club, and even Anthony Rizzo was slowing down from his torrid April-May start.
Kyle Schwarber carried the Cubs offense, almost single handedly, for several weeks, a month even. He put on a historic power display, blasting 16 home runs in just 273 PA’s (232 AB’s). He later accentuated his budding stardom by rebounding from a late September funk by hitting a club-record five homers in nine postseason games, including the blast that gave Jake Arrieta the lead he’d never surrender in the one-game wild card, and the ball that landed on the Budweiser sign that poetically signaled the end of the Cardinals 100 win season.
Next: The resulting impact
When Schwarber permanently moved to left field at the onset of a four game series at home against the Giants in early August, it proved to be the factor that enabled the Cubs to sweep that series (growing a 0.5 game lead to 4.5, which would later balloon to 13 by season’s end), and go on to finish 38-16 from that series onwards.
The move allowed them to keep their new big bat in play, retain the veteran catching work of Miguel Montero and David Ross, shift Addison Russell’s gold glove caliber play to shortstop, and light a fire under the benched Starlin Castro when Chris Coghlan was shifted from left field to second base. With both his raw production, and the domino effects his willingness to be moved to the outfield produced, Kyle Schwarber made the Cubs 2015 season what it ultimately proved to be.
The Cubs do not expect, nor do they require, that sort of impact from Contreras. When he was called up (on June 17th) the Cubs were on pace to win 112 games, and sat 10.5 ahead of St. Louis for the division lead. They have a more mature Bryant and Rizzo leading their offense, a lineup that is immensely deeper than last year’s, and a team that is all around significantly more balanced, poised, and dominant. There is no doubt that the Cubs would love to see Contreras take the reins behind the plate, both because it is where his future lies, and also due to the relative offensive struggles of the Cubs current catching brass.
In the more immediate future they will certainly hope that he can provide an offensive spark at a time when Rizzo is less than one hundred percent, Fowler (not to mention Tommy La Stella and Jorge Soler) is on the DL, Ben Zobrist is going through a major slump, and Jason Heyward continues to leave everyone waiting for the presumed sustained breakout that never seems to come. But it is not paramount to their success, nor will a failure on his part lead to a diminished chance of them going where they want to go this fall.
Willson Contreras is a wonderful story. He is a testament to the undeniable improvement within the Cubs player development system during the Theo Epstein era. He’s going to be a core member of a team that figures to be one of the best in baseball for the next several years, and at a prime position no less.
But he is not Kyle Schwarber. Willson Contreras is his own player, and his own person, with his own story; a story which we should appreciate and admire for what it is, rather than for what it is not. To do anything less, especially making convenient but ultimately inaccurate comparisons to that with which we are already familiar, would be a disservice to him and to us all.