Rozner: Struggles for Cubs, Schwarber very normal

Baseball is hard.

No, really. Baseball is hard and it's always been.

You can blame Jason McLeod and Theo Epstein for making it look easy. At least, blame them for finding players that have made it look easy.

They bring in players like Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, Kyle Schwarber, Ian Happ and Albert Almora Jr., or call up players like Willson Contreras, and when those guys perform immediately at the big-league level, we forget that it's abnormal.

It's just not that easy.

Think of the Royals and the extraordinary core of young players that arrived in the big leagues.

And then suffered for years.

It didn't happen fast for those players and some failed entirely. I picked Mike Moustakas to win AL Rookie of the Year in 2011. He hit .263 with 5 homers and an OPS of .675.

Good call.

But many of those Royals eventually got it together and it led to back-to-back pennants and a World Series title in 2015.

Yeah, it's normal for players to slowly find their way in the big leagues, notwithstanding the occasional Aaron Judge or Cody Bellinger.

But even for those freaks, if they had a tough second half, or a tough sophomore year, no one should be surprised.

Yet, we sit here today stunned that Schwarber has not been the Schwarber of 2015, or the Schwarber who missed an entire season and hit so well in the 2016 World Series.

Guilty as charged. I thought Schwarber would hit 40 home runs this year.

Another good call.

The Cubs did the right thing in sending Schwarber to Iowa and probably should have done it sooner, but they also believed he would come out of it.

After all, he had displayed some ridiculous skill under absurd circumstances in 2015 and 2016.

But Schwarber's swing had become too long and too pull-happy. The Cubs want him out of that habit and using the entire field again.

In any case, Schwarber seems relieved at having been given time in Triple-A to get himself back together.

“The numbers spoke for themselves,” Schwarber told the Des Moines Register. “Obviously, you don't ever want to come back down here, but it's an opportunity to relax, get back to being myself and try to get back up there.”

Schwarber took a few days off before heading to Iowa and spent last Sunday night in an empty ballpark taking batting practice fielded by grounds crew members and their families.

He was back at it Monday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon, long before his teammates arrived at the stadium.

“I'm not here to change everything,” Schwarber said. “I want to get back to (being) myself. I'm going to be confident while I'm doing it.”

Back in Triple-A, Schwarber has been hitting third in the lineup.

“Obviously, a demotion is a demotion,” Schwarber told the Register. “That's something you don't ever want to happen. It ticks you off a little bit, but you can't press.

“You've got to go back to what made you successful in the first (place) and what got you there in the first place.”

But the character that so impressed Cubs brass to begin with, and the kind that always puts players on their radar, is still evident.

“You've got to learn how to fail to be the best,” Schwarber said. “A lot of good players have gone through this.

“I'm not going to back down at all. I'm going to work my butt off.”

You need to play to get better and he can do that at Iowa, as opposed to platooning in Chicago.

Yeah, baseball is hard … even if the Cubs made it all too easy to forget that.

brozner@dailyherald.com

• Listen to Barry Rozner from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on the Score's “Hit and Run” show at WSCR 670-AM and follow him @BarryRozner on Twitter.