Chicago Cubs: The pluses and minuses of Kris Bryant batting leadoff
By Bill Felber
Chicago Cubs: The pluses and minuses of Kris Bryant batting leadoff
Dexter Fowler in 2016
When the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016, their leadoff hitter was Dexter Fowler. He got a lot of plaudits for his leadoff ability and was widely viewed as a key reason why the Cubs succeeded. For purposes of comparison, here’s how Fowler scored as a leadoff hitter in 2016:
OBA XBA SB* Total
Dexter Fowler .393 .082 .024 .519
With that as a standard, what, then are Ross’s options as he tries to pick a leadoff hitter? Here is how eight potential Cubs starters measured up in 2019 on that same scale.
Player OBA XBA SB* Total
Willson Contreras .355 .108 .002 .465
Anthony Rizzo .405 .096 .008 .509
David Bote .362 .079 .014 .455
Javier Baez .316 .127 .020 .463
Kris Bryant .382 .106 .006 .494
Kyle Schwarber .339 .113 .003 .455
Ian Happ .333 .122 .013 .468
Jason Heyward .343 .076 .014 .433
Based on 2019 data, Bryant is Ross’s second best proven option as a leadoff hitter, his .494 percentage trailing only Anthony Rizzo.
At the same time, no member of the Cubs’ roster scores especially high in leadoff-related skills. Considered against the MLB .323 average, the Chicago Cubs do okay in on-base average. But with just 45 stolen bases, they were last in the NL and 29th in all of baseball in getting their own butts from first base to second.
Baez was the team leader in that category in 2019, but he only had 11 steals. And that failed to offset his sub-par .313 on-base average.
(*SB is calculated by dividing the number of a player’s stolen bases by his plate appearances.)