Why Cubs might live to regret Kyle Schwarber departure most

Why Cubs might live to regret Kyle Schwarber departure most originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago

During a late September game at Wrigley Field with his team hunting a playoff berth, the Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber caught the Cubs napping and stole third base without a throw.

“Freaking Schwarber,” Cubs manager David Ross said with a smirk. “He’s such a baseball guy. I think that’s why we miss him and love him.”

Ross, who has been known to greet ex-Cubs pals with affectionate double birds, already had “booed” Schwarber when the slugger batted for the first time in the series — to which Schwarber responded later by “booing” Ross.

“Freaking Schwarber,’’ Ross repeated when asked about that exchange.

The Cubs definitely miss Schwarber. Maybe even more than Ross knows.

Maybe more than any of the other core players they jettisoned during this latest two-year teardown and to-be-determined rebuild.

A few weeks after that three-game reunion at Wrigley, Schwarber opened the National League Championship Series Tuesday for the upstart Phillies against Yu Darvish and the upstart Padres in San Diego — leading off the series with a walk and later crushing a sixth-inning home run off Darvish worthy of that 2015 video-board shot at Wrigley during a 2-0 Game 1 victory for the Phillies.

The nearly 500-foot shot was the longest in Petco Park history and Schwarber’s 10th career postseason home run — fourth since the Cubs non-tendered him during their “biblical’-losses payroll purge after the 2020 season.

Meanwhile, Ross and the Cubs are at home after a second straight losing season wondering if the manager will have enough starting pitching, enough pop in the middle of his order and enough athletes up the middle of the field next year to be as competitive as the Cubs were the last time Schwarber was on the team.

Whether Schwarber could have, or would have, made any difference in the Cubs’ on-field fortunes the last two years since the Cubs cut him over a projected $8 million salary, the sizable lefty slugger has made a sizable imprint on the teams that have employed him since — and left a sizable hole from the left side in the Cubs’ lineup.

And in their clubhouse.

“He is everything as advertised,” said Phillies president Dave Dombrowski, who signed Schwarber to a four-year, $79 million deal before this season.

“We all know that he can hit with power; we all know he has a good eye at the plate; we know he’s a gamer,” Dombrowski said. “But for us one of the things that really did come into play very strongly was not only all those things but his presence in the clubhouse.

“We felt we needed somebody that could change the atmosphere in the clubhouse, and was not afraid to be a leader. And none of it’s pretense. It’s just sincere.”

Pretense? It’s debatable whether Schwarber even knows what that is.

On the day at Wrigley a few weeks ago that Schwarber met up with an old Cubs beat writer to talk about life as a post-Cubs All-Star, he had to put down the hearty pregame serving of cheesy nachos he was munching so he could chat.

The secret to all those home runs?

“Damn right,” Schwarber said.

“It’s hard to find players like that,” Dombrowski said, presumably referring to the edgy, self-assured nature and not the nachos. “Throughout my career it’s been like that, but I think it’s even harder now, because I think fewer people are willing to stand up and take charge.”

It’s what made Schwarber a favorite of then-Cubs president Theo Epstein from their initial meeting before the Cubs took Schwarber fourth overall in the 2014 draft, what Epstein saw as a potential tone-setter in a perennially contending clubhouse — at least until Epstein resigned a year ahead of his contract expiring and a month before successor Jed Hoyer’s demolition began.

It’s also part of what makes Schwarber arguably the biggest one that got away among all the core players sent packing the last 23 months — at least the worst move of the bunch.

Also this:

He earned back-to-back All-Star selections since being non-tendered.
He won the 2022 NL home run crown his prodigious power always suggested he had in him, with 46 homers.
Even before helping stake the Phillies to a 1-0 NLCS lead, he had helped two teams (Boston last year) reach the playoffs and win four of five postseason rounds.

But mostly, it was the worst move because the Cubs got nothing for him. Not teenage prospects like they got from the Padres for Darvish. Not even the draft pick they’ll get when Willson Contreras turns down the qualifying offer and becomes a free agent in a few weeks.

Nothing.

Epstein once said during the buildup to the Cubs’ World Series run that “it’s only money.”

That was in the context of the cost of a free agent vs. the cost of trading for a valuable player and then paying that player on top of the prospect capital lost in the trade.

It also applies to Schwarber — who quickly made more money on the open market when the Nationals signed him to a one-year, $10 million deal (eventually trading him at the deadline to the Red Sox).

“Was I upset at the time? Sure,” said Schwarber, who refused to say the Cubs made a mistake with the cost-cutting move.

“There’s always a side of me that I knew I was better than how I was performing in Chicago,” he said. “I had a change of scenery, and it happened to be one of the better things for me personally in my career. I was able to go out and see a different side, outside of Chicago.”

He quickly emphasized he wasn’t knocking Chicago or the good experiences he had with the Cubs.

“There’s not a bone in my body that feels angry at them,” he said. “But it was definitely a better thing for me personally to get the fresh start and get to play every day and go from there.”

What would he have to be angry about? This is a guy who has never finished a season on a team with a losing record and only once in an eight-year career ever missed the playoffs (2019 Cubs).

His teams have won 10 out of 15 postseason rounds and gone 10-2 in postseason games with a chance to clinch — Schwarber going 9-for-24 (.375) in those would-be-clinch games with three homers and a 1.217 OPS,

Whatever happens the rest of the NLCS between the Padres and Phillies, Schwarber already has had the last laugh at the Cubs expense since they broadsided him with the non-tender.

And consider this: His production might be about to take another leap heading into the second year of his four-year deal at hitter-friendly Citizens Bank Park.

That’s when extreme defensive shifts are banned and lefty pull hitters such as Schwarber and Anthony Rizzo have a chance to see their hit totals jump.

“I can’t say I’m going to dislike it,” said Schwarber,. “That’s going to be a big thing now. Contact’s going to get rewarded.

“You don’t have to think about trying to hit the ball at the third base bag because no one’s standing there.”

Schwarber won’t try to guess how many more hits he might get without the extra infielder roaming shallow right field. But for a guy with a .337 career on-base percentage (.374 last year), it’s not hard to imagine a significant increase across the board.

Or how much the Cubs might like to have that non-tender decision to do over again.

“I never get into what other clubs do. That’s their own business,” Dombrowski said. “I don’t know what clubs’ financial decisions are at particular times they have to make them. There’s many a move I’ve done that I’m sure people said, ‘Why’d he do that?’