Fans and the media often talk about players being able to turn on a switch, and poof, something happens and a player suddenly improves. It’s harder in football because next games are usually a week away. We like to think baseball players automatically carry over success to the next game/day.
For the past five months I’ve been highly critical of Alex Bregman’s slow start and failure as a high-priced free agent. All that changed on Wednesday with Bregman hitting three homers and driving in seven runs against the Nats. With the homer he hit on Tuesday, the four homers represent 1/4 of his home run production for the season. And no matter how everyone spins it, that’s not what the Cubs are paying him hundreds of millions for. The same people have already pretended they didn’t sign him to hit 30-40 homers. They pretended the same thing with last year’s big acquisition, Kyle Tucker. It’s taken a full offseason and signing with the Dodgers for people to realize the King Tuck experiment was a flop.
The Cubs aren’t the only team whose big acquisitions don’t have great first seasons. However, in both cases the front office pushed in all their chips, thinking they were just one guy from making a deep postseason run. Because we want to like these guys so badly, we make excuses. When Yu Darvish flopped immediately, his hurt psyche after the 2017 WS loss to the cheating Stros was supposed to exculpate him from blame. He did have a better second season, but by then someone else went all in.
The Cubs have been on the other side most notably when they purged the stars of the ’16 team. After being traded away, Jose Baez and Kris Bryant didn’t have great first seasons with the two teams that signed them to big FA contracts (Tigers and Rockies respectively).
The Cubs signed Bregman to be a run-producer, not to be mediocre at the plate. They don’t need another “coach on the field,” they need legit, old-school production. Last year they got nothing from coach Justin Turner, who’s been replaced with Michael Conforto.
I don’t expect Tony Perez numbers, but I do hope to eat my words if he can produce to the back of his baseball card.
