It’s been an awesome year to be a Cubs fan, especially if you plan on being a Cubs fan in the future. They are pretty good and pretty fun. What’s more, they are crazily young. Soler, Bryant, Russell, and Schwarber are ALL eligible for Rookie of the Year. Any of the 4 could belong in the discussion. Put them together, and it’s fairly incredible:
| G | PA | AB | H | 1B | 2B | 3B | HR | R | RBI | BB | SO | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
| Soler | 49 | 208 | 189 | 50 | 33 | 12 | 1 | 4 | 20 | 19 | 15 | 67 | 0.265 | 0.322 | 0.402 |
| Bryant | 56 | 250 | 211 | 62 | 40 | 12 | 2 | 8 | 38 | 39 | 33 | 74 | 0.294 | 0.396 | 0.483 |
| Russell | 49 | 192 | 177 | 45 | 26 | 14 | 0 | 5 | 21 | 20 | 14 | 61 | 0.254 | 0.313 | 0.418 |
| Schwarber | 2 | 10 | 10 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0.600 | 0.600 | 1.100 |
| Total | 156 | 660 | 587 | 163 | 103 | 38 | 4 | 18 | 84 | 82 | 62 | 204 | 0.278 | 0.352 | 0.448 |
That’s insane to think about. The MEAN production of the Cubs’ rookies is .278/.352/.448. Only Soler has a wRC+ below 100 (96). Their combined wOBA (.352) is in the Top 50 of qualified major league players.
It’s not like there aren’t warts, however. Besides Schwarber, who has no sample size to draw from, Bryant actually strikes out the least and that’s 29.6%. Russell and Soler are only successful at the moment because they both have huge BABIPs. You hope to see that walk rate increase. For Russell, it has. Here’s a chart of the 10-day walking average for Russell’s walk rate and strikeout rate:
That’s extremely encouraging. As the season has progressed, Russell has really cut down on his strikeouts while increasing his walks.
Here’s the same graph for Kris Bryant:
Not quite as rosy, as the walks are trending down. Notice, however, that the two rookies end up in more-or-less the same place. They both sport around 10% walks (which is pretty good; the league average is 7.6%) and strikeout rates near 25% (not as good; the league average is 20.2%). Even that doesn’t tell the whole story, though. If the league has 2.66 strikeouts for every walk, the Cubs’ rookies both make out pretty well in that trade (2.5 strikeouts per walk). Of course, this also leaves unsaid the huge power stroke that Kris Bryant has. If Joc Pederson wasn’t having an MVP-type season, Bryant would have the award on lockdown.
Jorge Soler’s is a slightly different story.
Soler, for one reason or another, has just refused to take a walk all season. Of the three rookies with real playing time, he has the highest strikeout rate (32.2%) and the lowest walk rate (7.2%). It’s worth noting, however, that those ratios are more or less identical to Russell’s (31.8% and 7.3%, respectively), and the margin of error makes any real determination meaningless here. Even Soler has been able to get his walks under control until he went down with an injury.
Put it together, and the Cubs’ rookies have put together 156 games, an entire season. In that entire season, they’ve compiled 5 WAR. Essentially every meaningful statistic has been improving throughout the season (Addison Russell being especially encouraging). If this doesn’t get you excited about the Cubs, you should check your pulse.
The best part is that cavalry hasn’t finished arriving. Pierce Johnson just came back from injury; he needs to be added to the 40-man in the offseason and he looks like he’s back to embarrassing AA hitters already. Carl Edwards Jr. hasn’t had the greatest season in relief, but he’s not too far away from pushing the Edwin Jackson-types out of the bullpen either. Armando Rivero had a rough start to the season; forget about that now, because he’s been pretty dominant in the last month and is a phone call away. Even Arismendy Alcantara has been turning it on lately. That’s a lot of young help without even mentioning Jacob Turner, who is on the mend and looking very much like someone who will replace Tsuyoshi Wada in the rotation as soon as he slips up.