Twitter followers of mine and readers of this blog have heard a lot from me about how much I dislike the rebuilding plan executed thus far by the Cubs’ front-office team of president Theo Epstein and GM Jed Hoyer. I’m not going back on it - I didn’t like that they essentially sucked on purpose for three years, missed on signing free agents that seemed to fit the profile of what they were looking for (although missing Masahiro Tanaka may have been a blessing in disguise), and whiffed badly on the only semi-major free-agent signing they’ve made, Edwin Jackson.
That being said, we’re about to start seeing the fruits of that labor. Tonight, Javier Baez will make his Cubs’ debut, joining Arismendy Alcantara as highly-touted prospects that are now on the big club. Baez had been playing shortstop for the majority of his minor-league career, but got work at second base over the last few weeks and evidently impressed enough to earn the call-up. He will play second for the MLB Cubs and presumably will continue to as long as he and shortstop Starlin Castro share the infield.
Now, both Baez and Alcantara were actually acquired by former GM Jim Hendry, the latter as an international free agent, in 2008, and the former with Hendry’s last first-round draft pick, in June 2011. So as poor a job as Hendry did with the Cubs at times, he certainly deserves credit for the two of them, as well as the new brain trust deserving credit for helping shepherd the pair of them to the bigs. Theo’s true influence as far as minor leaguers won’t start to be felt until Jorge Soler, the one major Cuban expat who the Cubs were able to bring in (who’s currently decimating AAA), makes his MLB debut, likely next month. Kris Bryant, the top draft pick from 2013 who is putting up video-game numbers in the minors, should join him early next season.
Baez’s arrival is interesting on a number of levels. It speaks, first of all, to the idea that the Cubs may plan to at least try to have a good MLB team in 2015. I say this because Baez has exhibited a propensity to struggle at each new level for the first couple of months after arriving before adjusting and turning into a stud again. (Most recently, Baez was horrific his first 6 weeks at AAA, with a .484 OPS, but since mid-May has compiled a .931 OPS, and even with his early struggles has eclipsed the 20-HR mark for the season - perhaps just as encouraging, Baez's K rate has fallen and his contact rate risen each month of the season so far.) By allowing Baez to get what we assume to be his typical early struggles out of the way now, the front office surely hopes that he will have morphed into Super-Javy again by next spring.
Somewhat related to that, it burns a year of service time for Baez. Most baseball fans are aware of the service-time game played with many prospects, especially in the first half of the season. In layman’s terms, a player’s service-time clock is started when he’s brought up from the minors, with him becoming a free agent six seasons later, but by holding a guy down a certain amount of time after Opening Day, a team can knock that free agency back another year. It’s why projected studs like George Springer, Mike Trout, Gregory Polanco, Anthony Rizzo and several others have come up in May or June in the last few years rather than when they were clearly ready to. It's also why Bryant likely won't be up until next May. (Soler was signed to an MLB contract out of Cuba, so service time is less of a concern with him.) The Cubs could have stashed Baez for a few more months in a similar way and gained an extra year of team control on the back end, but elected not to - more evidence that they may view 2015 as the first year of the climb back up from the bottom. (It's also evidence that they may like their chances of getting Baez to agree to a team-friendly contract extension before too long, as they did with Rizzo and Castro, but that's another blog post.)
On the field, Baez’s arrival should be of further interest because there’s hardly anyone like him in baseball - a middle infielder with legitimate 30+ home run potential. Baez drew a lot of eyeballs in spring training, when he was pounding home runs regularly, and this coming off a year in which he’d led AA in OPS despite also being the youngest player in the entire league. Now he will see the chance for his potential to come to fruition, and fans will get the chance to see a guy whose bat speed is often compared with that of Hall of Fame-caliber bat Gary Sheffield’s.
Baez is not a Jeff Kent type all-hit no-glove man at second base, though. He is reasonably speedy and very athletic in the field and has the potential to be a plus defender. He has been known to make the occasional error, especially with his big arm, so the comparison to his presumed double-play partner Castro, who possesses both the potential and mistake-prone qualities of Baez in the field, is an easy one to make. However, like Castro, who has improved defensively in his 4 years in the bigs, Baez should become a solid defender.
Many will note that Baez’s improvement also coincided roughly with the arrival of Manny Ramirez, who was hired as a player-coach a couple of months ago in the organization and has been at AAA working with the hitters, especially Baez, Bryant and Soler. Bryant in particular has been quoted as being impressed with Ramirez’s acumen at the plate and claims he’s been a huge boon to the Iowa Cubs. If Baez, Bryant and Soler come up and are the power-laden monster hitters Cubs’ fans hope they become, Manny’s involvement in their development may be a neat side story.
For now, though, all that matters is that there’s one more reason to watch Cubs’ games. Unlike last year, when a depressingly underperforming Rizzo and Castro were the only reasons to tune in unless Jeff Samardzija was pitching, there are several players on any given day that should be on the next contending Cubs’ team - the aforementioned Rizzo and Castro, Alcantara and Baez, on top of surprise stud pitcher Jake Arrieta, with a nod to Kyle Hendricks and the handful of decent Cubs’ relievers, each of whom may also end up contributing to the team's resurgence if things pan out.
The light at the end of the tunnel isn’t big, but it’s visible, and that, to this long-suffering Cubs fan at least, is exciting. Go, Javy, go.
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