It’s thinner time for agile Schwarber
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.— For the second consecutive spring, Kyle Schwarber has come to camp in the “best shape of my life.”
This time, he might be right. At least it looked that way when he singled off Giants ace Madison Bumgarner in the first inning Sunday, then stole second base— and third ( albeit with Bumgarner showing appropriate attention for February).
Schwarber undertook an offseason regimen designed more for agility and quickness than strength or necessarily losing weight.
While some of the breathless social- media comparisons of 2017 and 2018 pictures might be a bit overplayed, Schwarber does look a bit narrower than a year ago.
“I don’t think it’s, ‘ Oh, he looks thinner, so he’s going to be quicker or more nimble.’ I think he is,” manager Joe Maddon said during his pregame media scrum. “I’ve watched him run the bases. It just seems like everything moves a lot more easily.
“Having said that, I never thought he was slow. I always thought he moved well for a big man. So I just think that all this is going to help.”
Schwarber bounced back from a brief minor- league demotion last season after slumping in the first half. He had a strong second half (. 894 OPS) and finished with 30 home runs, second on the team to Anthony Rizzo’s 32.
If the work pays off with improvement in left field, it could mean more playing time.
He and the Cubs are expecting him to build off last year’s second half— maybe even improve on that one stolen base.
Sombermoment in San Diego
Cubs president Theo Epstein, whose first baseball job out of college in the 1990s was with the Padres working in a low- level baseball- operations position for general manager Kevin Towers, left camp to attend a memorial service for his mentor at San Diego’s Petco Park.
Towers, one of the most popular and respected executives in the game, died four weeks ago at 56 after a long battle with a rare form of thyroid cancer.
“I was just a nobody, a faceless kid trying to be invisible and not get in the way,” Epstein said. “But there was never such a thing as a nobody to Kevin Towers— he just wasn’t wired that way.”
Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer, who succeeded Towers as Padres GM in 2010, also attended the memorial service, along with Cubs special assistant Rick Sutcliffe.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy, Towers’ longtime manager in San Diego, also missed a game to be in San Diego as one of the scheduled speakers.
More than 100 baseball executives were expected to attend, including former CubsGMJim Hendry ( now with the Yankees).
“He was my friend, my boss and my mentor,” Epstein said.
“He didn’t care if you were the president of the team, an intern or a backup beat writer for a newspaper. He treated you like you wanted to be treated. That was KT. It didn’t matter who you were or who you weren’t. He treated you with love and respect. And if he liked you, you were lucky enough to be dragged into his orbit, and then you were in for the ride of your life.”