With an up-and-coming right-handed prospect in Nico Hoerner, a very good utility man in David Bote on a long-term deal, and a productive veteran left-hander in Jason Kipnis here to bridge the Cubs second base job from the present to the future, there’s not much of a reason to lament the Tommy La Stella trade.
He may never have had the success he’s having with the Angels here in Chicago, let alone the chance to prove it. You can call that a player development or talent-identification failure in its own right, but still … big picture, the Tommy La Stella trade doesn’t keep me up at night (even if the lefty the Cubs got in that deal, Conor Lillis-White, never threw a single pitch in the Cubs organization before being released earlier this year …).
But still.
When I was writing up Ian Happ’s blisteringly hot start to the season earlier today, I happened to notice Tommy La Stella on the first page of the leaderboards. Again. After slashing .295/.346/.486 (122 wRC+) in his big 2019 breakout with the Angels, La Stella is up to .292/.424/.458 (157 wRC+) this season, which is good for the 26th best slash line in baseball.
As you can see, he’s still not doing a ton of damage in terms of extra bases, but his 16.9% walk rate is more than three times his 5.1% strikeout rate. How good would that look on this team right now? And to be sure, he’s not just getting lucky.
La Stella has always had a pretty good eye, but his 20.3% swing rate on pitches out of the zone this year is his career best – by a healthy margin – and ranks 20th in MLB. Meanwhile, he’s got an almost comically high 94.7% contact rate on pitches in the zone. When you can combine that sort of discipline and good contact with a 44.4% hard-hit rate and a minuscule 11.1% soft-hit rate, plus near-career bests in line drive, ground ball, and fly ball rates AND a .295 BABIP that is almost exactly identical to your career .293 mark, it’s hard to say anything but good things about your current and expected future production at the plate. La Stella has earned every single bit of this.
Indeed, Statcast has La Stella’s expected batting average up at .306 and his expected slugging up at .476, both better than his actual marks, resulting in an expected wOBA at .397 (compared to where he is at .389). Clearly, the Cubs did not think he was capable of this much. Their loss. Joe Maddon’s gain. Nico Hoerner, David Bote. and Jason Kipnis’ duty to avenge.