Frank Schwindel, Patrick Wisdom, and the Chicago Cubs’ big lineup gamble

Chicago Cubs president and general manager Jed Hoyer is taking a big gamble on some very small names in preparing his team for the start of the 2022 season.

Prior to the lockout, Hoyer made several moves designed to fortify an obviously weak rotation. Those included the signing of free agent Marcus Stroman and a waiver claim that brought in Wade Miley. Both are veterans who project to be at the top of the team’s rotation when the regular season begins.

But Jed Hoyer did nothing at all to bolster the projected lineup for the Chicago Cubs in 2022

As it stands now, the Chicago Cubs appear poised to begin 2022 with virtually the same cast of largely unknowns that they finished with in 2021.

That’s nowhere more true than in the middle of the projected opening day lineup. In the two key power spots, Hoyer has first baseman Frank Schwindel and third baseman Patrick Wisdom.

They have two things in common. Both looked impressive when given a half-season chance in 2021. But both also are career journeymen who have failed to break through in any of their previous opportunities.

For the Cubs, the hope is that Schwindel and Wisdom play as they did in the Major League portions of their 2021 seasons, and not as they have in four previous major league chances.

Wisdom is a 30-year-old drafted by the Cardinals out of St. Marys College (Calif.) in 2012. He languished in that team’s minor league system for five years, batting .244, before being given a shot in 2018. That chance lasted 32 games. Debuting in August, he batted .260 while switching between third and first base. His four home runs and 10 RBI failed to impress Cardinal management, which that December traded him to Texas for somebody named Drew Robinson.

With the Rangers, Wisdom saw even less of a Major League field. Sent down in late April after a .154 start, he spent most of 2019 with Triple A Nashville, then was released. The Seattle Mariners signed Wisdom, but he languished at the team’s alternate site through most of 2020 before being released in August and catching on with the Cubs.

With the Cubs, he was hitless in two plate appearances in 2020.

Wisdom started 2021 at Triple-A Iowa, where he managed only four hits in 25 official at-bats. Nevertheless, the Cubs promoted him to play third base in late May when it became obvious that Kris Bryant had more trade value as a utility player than full-time third baseman.

Finally, something kicked in. Given a full-time chance, Wisdom was hitting .260 in mid-August and doing so with power. He slumped badly over the season’s final five weeks, but still finished with 28 home runs, 61 RBI, and a .518 slugging average.

Schwindel’s resume is equally enigmatic. An 18th-round pick of the Royals out of St. John’s University (N.Y.) in 2013, he lingered at lower levels until 2017, making six stops in the Royals system. Debuting as a 27-year-old early in the 2019 season, Schwindel got one hit in 15 plate appearances and was summarily released.

The Tigers signed him in June, and he hit .255 for Double-A Erie. But labeled by then as a career minor leaguer, Schwindel was released again in November, catching on with the Oakland A’s. They sent him to Las Vegas, where he jacked his average to .317. But with Matt Olson having a big season in Oakland, the A’s had no use for a career minor league first baseman, so in mid-July — when it became evident that Anthony Rizzo’s days with the team were numbered — they packaged him to the Cubs’ Triple-A team in Iowa for the waiver fee.

Promoted at month’s end when Rizzo was traded, Schwindel, like Wisdom, blossomed. Hitting safely in his first eight starts, he finished the season at .342. His 13 home runs and 19 doubles worked out to a 1.002 OPS for the half-season he played.

Only once in 28 previous minor league stops had Schwindel generated a better OPS … and that was over just an 11-game stop at Double-A Lakeland in 2019.

Hoyer’s gamble, then, is that the Schwindel-Wisdom tandem will give him over a full season something approaching double what they gave the Cubs over their shorter stints in 2021. That would include slugging averages around .550, 75 to 80 home runs, and on base averages around .330.

The last time the heart of the Chicago Cubs lineup produced numbers like that was probably back in 2016 when, not coincidentally, the team won the World Series.

But there’s also the other possibility: Schwindel and Wisdom jointly revert to the form they showed prior to arriving in Chicago in midseason 2021. That was the form that got them sentenced to a life in the minors.

If that happens, Hoyer’s professed hope of a quick turnaround in 2022 stands virtually no chance of coming to fruition.

The Cubs’ new chief exec is gambling big-time on the chance that Wisdom and Schwindel are both hidden gems who finally, and late in a ballplayer’s life, smoothed out all the rough edges.