Power, Discipline, Defense: How Mike Olt Can Still Contribute to the Cubs

Photo courtesy of Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports

It has been a very exciting few weeks for Cubs fans, and that is putting it mildly. Kris Bryant made his much-anticipated debut on over a week ago at Wrigley, and Addison Russell followed suit in Pittsburgh last Tuesday. It’s hard to overstate what these types of changes mean for fans of the North Siders. The future really is now, and this team appears to have really turned an important corner in its rebuild. But it is worth remembering that every roster spot comes with some sort of a human cost. Every time somebody comes up, somebody else has lost a job or some of their health. This is all to say: Mike Olt’s start to the season certainly hasn’t gone as he’d hoped.

In the fourth game of the season, Olt took a 96 mph Adam Ottavino fastball off of his wrist and was forced to exit the game. The injury was initially downplayed, and Olt was able to appear in two later games as a pinch hitter. However, we eventually learned that the 26-year-old third baseman did indeed have a hairline fracture in his wrist, putting him on the shelf for an extended period of time. The Bryant promotion quickly swallowed this storyline, because the timing of Olt’s injury gave the Cubs a convenient baseball reason to promote their star prospect on the soonest possible date. During this time, Olt has (understandably) been all but forgotten.  But the Cubs’ Opening Day third baseman should get his cast off in 4-6 weeks, and he will likely be able to come back soon after his 60-day DL stint, so it is worth looking at how he can contribute on this newly overhauled roster.

Pre-2013, Baseball Prospectus ranked Mike Olt as the no. 30 overall prospect in baseball. In the time since, however, he has simply not been a productive big-league player—no matter how hard you squint. In 314 career plate appearances, he has provided a -0.6 WARP, a .227 tAV, and 119 strikeouts (a 37.9 percent K-Rate). Olt has also battled numerous health problems, including a well-documented vision issue that many have suggested was severely affecting his contact skills. These types of numbers and trends do not typically portend even a moderately useful MLB career.  But let’s go back—just for a moment—and reexamine what made Olt such an interesting prospect just two years ago. Here is Jason Parks’ take on Olt’s strengths when he was still with the Rangers in 2013:

Good athlete; high-end bat speed; power to all fields; some sources put a 7 on his raw power; could hit 25-30 HR at major-league level; good eye for balls/strikes; glove at third is plus; centers and plays position with shortstop actions; arm is easy plus.

These types of reports always sound glowing, but this emphasizes three plus skills in particular: power, discipline, and defense. Together, the possession of these skills makes for a player who can provide a boost to any bench in baseball—the role that Olt is most likely to fill on this team going forward. Let’s take a look at whether Olt still has these plus skills and whether they could help him contribute to a good Cubs team in the future.

Power

Power might be the most enticing skill in the game today. League-wide ISO was .135 last year—its lowest mark since 1992—and the Cubs have led the movement towards hoarding the now-much-rarer power hitters that still exist in the league. In short, power plays in today’s game, and Olt still has it in abundance. Despite his miserable year in 2014, he managed to post an ISO of .196 and hit 12 home runs in just 258 plate appearances. With power like that, if Olt were able to even slightly decrease his contact issues, he would be a useful right-handed bat off the bench for almost any team. As an example of Olt’s “power to all fields” check out this long opposite field shot—Olt’s only homer this year before getting injured.

Assuming that Olt’s wrist heals fully his power could potentially be enticing enough on its own to earn him an MLB bench spot. Yes, it’s dangerous to predict power to return quickly after a wrist injury, but luckily for Olt, power is not his only exciting skill.

Plate Discipline

Usually we’d assume that a player with a 37.9 percent strike out rate would have pitch recognition issues, and would be prone to chasing pitches way out of the zone. But this is not the case with Olt. Instead, Olt’s pitch recognition is almost frustratingly good, and his O-Swing% was 22.7 percent last year, almost 10 percent lower than the 31.3 percent that was league average. Olt swung at fewer pitches overall than most players—his 41.4 percent swing rate was well below the 46.7 percent league average—and he was selective within the zone as well, swinging at 61.9 percent of pitches in the zone versus the 65.7 percent of the rest of the league. This sort of plate discipline is hard to teach—just ask Starlin Castro.

Mike Olt 2014 Plate Discipline:

This is what makes Olt’s struggles so frustrating. That combination of power and plate discipline should lead to a deadly hitter—but it doesn’t. This is due to his terrible contact rates, which you can also see in the table above. Overall, his contact is 13.4 percent lower than league average, which in combination with his pitch recognition leads to deep counts, swings and misses, and a 37.9 percent K-rate. But there is something there, and the discipline is so good that it is hard not to imagine the hitter Olt could be if his contact was simply below average. Olt reportedly worked on his swing this winter, with a focus on keeping his bat in the zone for a longer period of time. Olt had a relatively strong spring but still struck out a lot—19 times in 48 plate appearances—so there is very little data that can show us whether this helped or not. In any case, it would be hard to argue that we should write off a 26-year-old with these types of skills—especially after only 314 MLB plate appearances.

Defense

Power hitters and defensive prowess tend not to go hand in hand, but in Olt’s case they seem to. Though the metrics didn’t show it in a relatively small sample size last year, he has been repeatedly graded out as a plus defensive third baseman over the years. But now, with Bryant up and seemingly entrenched at third, it is defensive versatility that will make Olt useful to the Cubs. Here’s what he had to say about versatility during Spring Training, when it was already clear that he would be unlikely to keep the third-base job for long:

Third base is definitely a comfort zone for me. I definitely got a lot better at first base. I feel more comfortable over there. When I do see my name in the lineup at first base, I’m at ease. Third base is a comfort zone for me. It’s good to get out there and learn other positions, especially in this game with the National League, and (manager) Joe Maddon likes to mix things up. In certain situations, you might be called to do several different positions, so it’s a good thing. […] I can do the outfield. I did it in Double-A when I was coming up, and it’s more relaxing. Just stand out there and see if you can catch a couple butterflies. That’s about it. There’s a lot of little things you have to learn about, catching flies your whole career.

That’s a pretty promising outlook, and with Olt’s athleticism and arm strength there is little reason to think that he couldn’t play a decent corner outfield or first base. You don’t have to look any farther than the Cubs’ current bench troubles to see how this player could really help fill out the Cubs’ roster. He could spell Chris Coghlan in left field one game, and then pinch hit for Tommy La Stella or Miguel Montero against a tough lefty the next day. Remember: Bryant started in center field on Thursday, so the Cubs aren’t always guaranteed their ideal infield alignment. If Olt can make some contact, his value could be very high—even if he’s mostly coming off the bench.

Olt might just be the Cubs oldest prospect. You’d think that by age 26, we’d know what we have in him, but somehow we don’t. Injuries and contact issues have derailed what started as an extremely promising career. But power hitters are hard to find, and Olt is not just a power hitter. His patience at the plate and defensive versatility also provide the team with tools that shouldn’t be easily dismissed. With only 314 plate appearances and a career BABIP of only .203, I’m still very interested to see how Olt can contribute to a competitive Cubs team this summer.