Joe Maddon returning in 2019 but no extension

beckdawg said:

You could still go LRLR with schwarber/bryant/Rizzo/Baez. You would also be putting another high on base guy in front of Baez. Sure you're hitting him 5th instead of 4th but statistically speaking he's usually going to lead off an inning hitting 4th because 1-3 all have OBP over .333. Batting him 5th would essentially be like batting him second just in the second inning on most days.

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The last Schwarber-at-leadoff experiment didn't exactly work out well. I'm not saying it would turn out the same way again, but it's worth remembering that it did break him so bad he had to go back to the minors to unscrew his approach.

fatbeard said:

The last Schwarber-at-leadoff experiment didn't exactly work out well. I'm not saying it would turn out the same way again, but it's worth remembering that it did break him so bad he had to go back to the minors to unscrew his approach.

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I'm not saying batting him lead off I'm saying batting him second.

beckdawg said:

I'm not saying batting him lead off I'm saying batting him second.

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You've already got the ideal #2 hitter in Bryant (hits for average, hits for power, gets on base, doesn't ground into DPs), so moving him to #3 where he'll get fewer PAs than hitting either 1, 2, or 4 just to accommodate a worse hitter in Schwarber doesn't seem like the proper valuation of your hitting talent.

fatbeard said:

You've already got the ideal #2 hitter in Bryant (hits for average, hits for power, gets on base, doesn't ground into DPs), so moving him to #3 where he'll get fewer PAs than hitting either 1, 2, or 4 just to accommodate a worse hitter in Schwarber doesn't seem like the proper valuation of your hitting talent.

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Well the ideal #2 hitter has produced what a seasonal pace of like 75 RBI's the past 2 years? I mean you know i'm not as tied down to RBI as a measure for how good someone is as a lot of old time people are. But it's an objective fact that the last 2 years the cubs have struggled to score runs in games. I'll concede that things worked wonderfully with Bryant batting second in 2016. But they also had one of the best lead off hitters in baseball that year.

If you're telling me they are going to get someone to match Fowlers 2016 production ok. I'm willing to give that a shot. But personally I don't see a lot of options for a lead off hitter other than Zobrist and they had him this year. So, all I'm saying is if something isn't working, try something different. Bryant may be an ideal #2 hitter. But you know what? If he's healthy he's an ideal #3 hitter. He's an ideal #4 hitter. You can literally put him anywhere in the line up and he's probably ideal because he's that good.