CHICAGO — The Chicago Cubs began their sell-off late Thursday night by sending Joc Pederson to the Atlanta Braves for a Class A prospect.
But it doesn’t even rate as an appetizer for what’s to come. Dealing the 29-year-old Pederson for 23-year-old first baseman Bryce Ball is like getting free breadsticks before the main meal.
It may halt your hunger cravings, but it’s really just a way to pass time while waiting for the entree.
Perhaps no one epitomized the Cubs’ first-half roller coaster like Pederson, who was brought in to replace Kyle Schwarber, whom the Cubs non-tendered last fall when they could not get anything of value after shopping him around.
After killing Cactus League pitching in Arizona, Pederson hit an abysmal .137 with one home run in his first 16 games through April 20 before going on the injured list with left wrist tendinitis. He returned in early May and went on a hot streak, hitting .295 with 10 home runs in his next 37 games with an .897 OPS.
At that point, Pederson’s one-year, $7 million deal looked like a steal for Cubs President Jed Hoyer. But in his last 19 games with the Cubs, Pederson hit .172 with no home runs and a .510 OPS, resembling the guy we saw in April.
Not coincidentally, the Cubs’ first-half collapse coincided with Pederson’s drop-off, making him expendable.
Which guy the Braves are getting is anyone’s guess, but they didn’t have to give away much to get him. In the trade, the Cubs picked up the Braves’ 12th-ranked prospect, according to MLB.com, and Atlanta will pick up the remaining $2 million of Pederson’s salary. Pederson has a mutual option for 2022.
With All-Star outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. out for the rest of the year, it was a quick-fix solution by Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos, who knew Pederson well from their time together in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization.
Ball is an all-or-nothing hitter with a .207 average and six home runs in Class A. Suffice to say he’s not exactly Fernando Tatis Jr., the Class A prospect the White Sox sent to the San Diego Padres in the James Shields trade in 2016. Shields was so awful he inadvertently helped start the Sox rebuild, while Tatis went on to become one of the game’s biggest stars.
What will we remember about the Pederson era on the North Side?
He brought some swag to the Cubs, from the time he stood at the plate and celebrated a fly ball he thought was leaving Wrigley Field, only to watch it turn into a sacrifice fly to medium right field, to the early June night in San Francisco he first emulated Tatis by copying his patented stutter-step move at third base on a home run trot. Pederson did it again later that week in San Diego, with Tatis watching on the field.
Pederson explained afterward he was paying homage to Tatis by sampling his work.
“He’s got some of the most swag in the game, so our team’s just having fun,” he said. “It kind of just happened in San Francisco, and I just kept it going. If I keep hitting homers, I’m going to keep doing it.”
But that was the end of the swag-a-thon, as both Pederson and the Cubs lineup stopped hitting in June.
Former Cubs teammate Jason Heyward said goodbye to Pederson with a cryptic Instagram post, writing: “Mind over matter... if it’s not from the crew it don’t matter. Keeping swagging out on em Yung.”
In the end, Pederson’s stint with the Cubs always was fated to be compared with how Schwarber was doing in Washington, where he signed as a free agent. The two were both left-handed sluggers coming off disappointing 2020 seasons.
It was no comparison. Schwarber hit 25 home runs in 265 at-bats before going on the IL with a hamstring injury, tying a modern day record with 12 home runs in 10 games in June. He’s third in the majors in home runs per at-bat, behind the Los Angeles Angels’ Shohei Ohtani and Tatis, and earned a selection to his first All-Star Game, though he could not participate due to injury.
Giving up on Schwarber without getting anything in return will go down as one of the worst moves of Hoyer’s first year as president, along with trading All-Star Yu Darvish to the Padres for Zach Davies and four low-level prospects, which doomed the season from the outset.
The Pederson trade won’t resonate like the Darvish deal, and it will be a few years before we know if Ball can become a major league talent. Pederson is likely to be remembered as the first of what’s expected to be a slew of Cubs players jettisoned before the July 30 trade deadline.
The onus is now on Hoyer to get a quality package for closer Craig Kimbrel, his most valuable trading chip, and some decent prospects in a deal for any of the “Big 3″ — Kris Bryant, Javier Báez and Anthony Rizzo.
The deal of any one of those three soon-to-be-free-agents will signal the end of an era that started with the 2012 rebuild and culminated in the 2016 championship season. Hoyer also will soon have to make a decision on Jake Arrieta, whose trade value is next to nothing after his poor first half and the subsequent admission by manager David Ross that Arrieta has been pitching through a hamstring issue since late May.
Davies also is likely to be shopped as the Cubs open up a spot in the rotation in the second half for rookie Justin Steele. Catcher Willson Contreras, who ripped the team’s effort at the end of the first half, also may be on the market for the right price.
So get ready for your appetizers, and don’t get too filled up on the breadsticks.
