The Cubs optioned Tyler Colvin to Iowa last week, effectively pulling the plug on a bizarre series of management decisions that tell you as much about Cubs' management and its shortcomings as it does about Colvin's ability to play at the major league level on a regular basis.
To recap his career in a nutshell, Colvin came up in September of 2009 to finish up a lost season. He got very little playing time under the Piniella regime and didn't impress anyone very much. Over the winter, he went down to Arizona and bulked up. He came into spring training and proceeded to tear up the Cactus league, hitting for average and power and pretty much forcing the Cubs to add him to the big league roster.
When he came north, though, Piniella gave him limited playing time early even though he continued his hot hitting. When he came up in 2009, it looked as if the Cubs were grooming him to play center field, but in the off-season, evidently having decided this wouldn't work or not wanting to take a chance on a young player in another lost season, Hendry opted to sign the journeyman Marlon Byrd to play center field for $30 million or so over three years.
A good team, that is, a well-run team, would have had some idea of the talent potential of a young player, of all their young players really. So if they supposed Colvin had the potential to play everyday in the majors, they would not have made moves that had the effect of blocking him at every turn. One can only conclude they did not see much potential there, or they were afraid to take a risk, preferring the acquisition of another overpaid free agent.
Colvin's emergence as a hitter in spring training 2010 created a problem though. They had, at least in the fans' eyes, a rookie phenom, but they had nowhere to play him. He continued to hit in the limited chances he was given in April and May, so that when the pressure built to bench Fukudome when he slumped in June, Piniella was forced to start playing him every day. Unfortunately in the run-up to getting his chance, Colvin learned that the way to impress Piniella was to hit home runs.
In the minor leagues, Colvin showed himself to be a reasonably fast player who hit for average with good power, but he had little patience at the plate. Kind of a left-handed Marlon Byrd. In the majors, though, Colvin turned into a power-hitter exclusively, 20 home runs in around 350 ABs. In the process, though, his average dropped to around .250 and his strikeouts went from around one in every 5 ABs to close to one in every 3. In short, Colvin transformed himself from a left-handed Byrd to a left-handed Soriano.
The upshot of this comedy of errors is that one-third of the way through his second full season in the major leagues, we still don't know whether Colvin is a potential starter and run-producer. There's just no excuse for that. He must have some ability to have hit 20 home runs in limited action last year. Granted that major league pitchers figured some weaknesses through the course of the season, but his performance is at least something to work with. One would suppose that that would merit a more reasoned approach than "platooning" him with another left-handed hitter in right field.
Sad to say the Cubs and Quade and Hendry seem to have fallen in with the notion that Colvin should play right field, a position that from my own limited observation of his skills, he is probably least suited to play. Maybe this is the result of the meme created by Steve Stone and reluctantly supported by Lou Piniella last season: that Fukudome did not represent the future of the team and that Alfonso Soriano and Marlon Byrd, equally unproductive through the second half of 2010, somehow did.
Actually, Colvin is probably best suited to playing left field or first base, with maybe some starts in center field where his range might compensate for his inexperience. With this in mind, the logical thing for the Cubs to do, especially through the first two months of the season when Fukudome is usually hot, would have been to let Colvin spell Soriano and Byrd at least four times a week against right-handers and maybe play a little first base.
I'm rather a firm believer in the notion that young players need to play when they come up to the majors and that they need to have a clearly defined role. Unfortunately when it comes to the Cubs, this is rarely the case. Starlin Castro seems to be the exception here, as is Darwin Barney thus far. The career of Felix Pie is more the norm.
Of course, there is another viewpoint respecting Colvin's skills, and one would rather hope it is not the case. With the terrible injury to Marlon Byrd and the likelihood that he will miss quite a lot of time this season, you might expect this to have been a golden opportunity to give Colvin consistent playing time. The Cubs have instead chosen to play Reed Johnson instead.
Now Johnson is having a nice enough year and he will not embarrass you in the field, but he is a veteran role player about whom virtually everything is known. Actually, the more Johnson plays, especially against right-handed pitching, the more his production will decline. I don't mean to slight his skills, but that is just the way it is. Using him more or less as Piniella did in 2008 is the absolute best you can expect. Since he is three years older, I would expect less.
In any case, the viewpoint I alluded to above is that the Cubs know a good deal more about Tyler Colvin that they are letting on. They see Colvin's skills as pretty much those demonstrated in August and September of last year, which is that he is an impatient hitter about whom the league has discovered weaknesses. Good players make adjustments. So far Tyler Colvin has not. So he was sent down to the minors allegedly to regain his confidence and to make the necessary adjustments. Playing at AAA will certainly help his confidence. So far through six games he is batting close to .300 and has five extra base hits.
However, he is not going to see pitching at AAA that will test him sufficiently to iron out the flaws in his approach and his swing. Pitchers who can consistently get him out are in the major leagues. That is the only place he can make the adjustments he needs to make. So for my money, the sooner they bring him up and give him consistent ABs, the better, because that is the only way we are going to find out if he is any good and is actually part of the future of this team or a throw-in in a trade that brings the possibility of genuine improvement.
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