Kyle Schwarber Will Change Baseball

The Chicago Cubs have a shitload of really good hitting prospects.

This is a sort of banal thing to say and yet in baseball terms it's pretty profound. Most organizations are fortunate to have two impact-level bats to funnel through their farm systems; the Cubs, meanwhile, have a flotilla.

Kris Bryant and Addison Russell are moseying through their rookie campaigns with not-unusual top-five talent growing pains, which is to say that they're a few manageable plate adjustments away from holding pitchers for ransom on the regular. There's Javier Baez, to whom the above also applies, except for the 'manageable' part; we care because if he does get things straightened out, he's got quick wrists and athleticism that recalls Gary Sheffield. Billy McKinney was the rice to Russell's carne asada in last year's Jeff Samardzija deal, and all he projects to become is a solid left fielder who gets on base, plays good defense and rips 15 or so home runs a year. Their shortstop assembly line has already cranked out overstock between Russell, Baez and current incumbent Starlin Castro, but someone left the switch on anyhow and out popped Gleyber Torres, who has the best glove of them all and is knocking on the door of Double-A at age 18.

And then there's Kyle Schwarber, the key to figuring out how the Cubs will sort out this amorphous glut of talent. Schwarber, this year's Futures Game MVP, got promoted again yesterday in the wake of Cubs catcher Miguel Montero hitting the DL with a thumb injury, and this stretch could prove to be the acid test regarding whether he'll stay up for good and whether he'll do so behind the plate. The alternative is left field and his bat would most certainly play there; prospects who put up a .333/.429/.613 in more than 600 minor league plate appearances can usually pull their weight irrespective of what position they play or how poorly they field it.

Keith Law slotted Schwarber 10th in his updated release of his top 50 prospects, and immediately noted that "this ranking may still be too light" on the strength of a hit tool that may only rival "one or two other players in the minors," including top overall prospect Corey Seager. The ceiling? Think Joey Votto.

So Schwarber is really good and he's going to take up residence somewhere in the ballpark and make North Siders giddy for the next decade or so. Where, exactly, he plays will tip over a stack of dominoes that will decide who ultimately stays in Wrigley and who gets shipped off, and where those survivors line up.

The ideal for everyone involved is for Schwarber to stick at catcher. If he hits the way he should, that would not only rocket him into the position's offensive elite, but also elevate him to one of the most valuable commodities in baseball at large. In which case, things could get interesting. Bryant and Russell are locks to join him in the team's longterm plans but where they play could be decided by the winner of the race between McKinney, Torres and Baez to establish themselves as viable major leaguers. The former would keep Bryant stationed at third base, while the latter could result in something as dramatic as boomeranging Russell from second back to short and flinging Bryant into left field, the spot where some have always imagined he'd wind up eventually.

Schwarber in left means less upside, but also fewer headaches. Bryant would stay at third base for now, and with Torres probably two-ish years away, Chicago can proceed with Castro at short and Russell at second, unless Baez wrangles in his whiff issue and presents them with an unexpectedly pleasant dilemma of where to use him. That could make things rather difficult for McKinney, whom Law doubts could hold his own anywhere defensively other than left field

There's always the Mike Napoli route, too, in which Schwarber could catch the majority of the time while occasionally spelling Anthony Rizzo at first and whoever's hanging out in left to keep his legs fresh. That would manufacture a whole new set of playing time gymnastics, one that might spill over into several other players taking up shop in multiple spots as well. Praise be to versatility.

However this plays out will be fascinating for the Cubs, who have quietly fashioned a fearsome rotation in a year's time and are a few prospects developing away from an equally jaw-quivering lineup. Whenever that happens, they'll annually find themselves on the shortlist of genuine World Series contenders.

But the matriculation of some of these players into the trade market will reverberate into the rest of baseball, too, whether that happens this trade deadline or this winter or some other time in the future. In other words, this is one of the storylines that could shape the foreseeable future of the sport. And Schwarber is the one standing before the line of dominos, deciding how and when to knock the first one down. Six feet flat and stocky, the odds figure to be against his staying behind the plate. That won't stop everyone from crowding around behind him, waiting to watch them fall.