I was reading that his swing mechanic is clunky. Upper half and lower half are out of sync. He is going to be a project and a potential bust due to it. D wise he is limited to LF.
So I just see him as a project. Nothing to get excited about. If they can fix his swing mechanic and take away the clunk from it he has DH potential.
Think you're undervaluing his defense. He's only "bad" because he has a weak throwing arm. He played CF for a michigan team that got 2nd at the college world series. So, he's not your prototypical bad fielding DH/LFer type. He's also not prone to striking out suggesting he has a very good eye(13%/18.6% bb/k rates in college).
I mean look I'm not going to sit here and say he's guaranteed to be amazing but the guy was being recruited as an edge rusher in football. He's super athletic for his size which given the cubs track record improving swing mechanics is a good guy to bet on. As far as the defense is concerned a weak arm especially in LF isn't that big of a deal. For example, Yelich has a -8.3 arm portion of his UZR since 2016 and because he has good range has still been worth 2.3 UZR/150. What matters far more in outfield defense is your range. You're more concerned in cutting down doubles than you are throwing guys out at home plate. The fact Michigan played him in CF shows he has decent range. That's not to say he's gonna be Billy Hamilton out there but he's also not going to be Melky Cabrera.
I could regale you with numerous names here but just go look at players who hit 25 HRs and had a walk rate over 10%. What you're going to see is they almost universally have a wRC+ of 115-120+. Even guys who have total dogshit batting averages like Rhys Hoskins are still productive bats at those rates and Nwogu has shown he's not a typical heavy K rate guy like Hoskins which really hampers his batting average.
If you go back and look what I said about Davis after he was drafted and why I was so high on him before he broke out most of the same things apply to Nwogu. The only major difference is his arm isn't nearly as good as Davis. But when you put a 60 grade run tool with a 55 grade power tool you have very interesting tools to build off of. And keep in mind MLB.com had him at a 45 hit 45 power 70 run 55 arm 50 field as opposed to Nwogu who's 45 hit 55 power 60 run 45 arm and 45 field. And that run tool is with him already being 6'3 235 where as Davis was listed at 6'4 175 and obviously Davis has slowed mildly as he's added muscle(down to a 60 runner now).
The point here is Davis was widely viewed to have a similar skillset in the draft and the cubs cleaned up his swing a bit and he had a monster first full season. In the case of Nwogu, it's not like he even hit bad in college. He had the 7th best batting average in the big 10 in 2019, the 5th best OBP, and the 6th best SLG. And as I already illustrated, he had good contact rates. I'm sure his current mechanics will expose him a bit vs higher level competition and thus need some reworking but when you hit .321/.435/.557 with flaws you have a lot of room to work with. Given the recent success the cubs have had quickly altering players I wouldn't bet against him. I mean Hoerner immediately found more power. Davis made a slight change and hit over .300. Say what you will about their ability to develop pitching but they know what the fuck they are doing with hitters. Even very meh tooled players like Bote have been developed well.
