Will Jason Kendall Help the Cubs?

By now you've all seen the news, Jason Kendall is back in the NL Central wearing the blue pinstripes of the Chicago Cubs. That's all well and good, but the real question here is whether or not Jason Kendall will actually help the Cubs towards their goal of overtaking the Brewers and winning the Central.

This is a fair question because Kendall has been awful at the plate this year. His key batting line is .226/.261/.281. That is putrid. He's been on a downslope for several years now, and Baseball Prospectus rates him as the second least valuable player at the plate this year in all of baseball (if you're unfamiliar with VORP, just look at it this way: Kendall has cost the A's 12 runs at the plate when compared to the typical journeyman AAAA-type player).

His defenders say he's great with handling pitchers, a great game caller, and a clubhouse leader. The thing is, being a nerdy blogger (I'm not pale though, I blog from my deck with my wireless internet connection!), those things aren't really tangible enough for me to just crown the Cubs division champs for making this move.

Keep reading after the jump for a more in depth look at things.


First things first. Kendall will hit better in Chicago. I feel pretty confident saying this. He improved a lot in the second half last year after an awful first half that had most people writing him off for the rest of his career (he went .323/.391/.368 after the break last year). He's also got very poor career numbers in the McAfee Coliseum, hitting .254/.323/.303 there. Since the Coliseum is a pitcher's park, it's expected that he would have relatively bad numbers there. Wrigley Field is not a pitcher's park. Kendall has a career .780 OPS at Wrigley, though I'm not sure how applicable that is since he hasn't played in the NL since 2004.

Secondly, it's not like Kendall is replacing Victor Martinez here. He's replacing the 2-for-31 Rob Bowen, the 10-for-64 Koyie Hill, and the not-terribly-promising Geovany Soto. He's coming cheap in terms of players (Bowen and a minor-league reliever) and money (between Oakland and the Pittsburgh Pirates, Kendall is mostly paid for). Still, he's not terribly good behind the plate. He's already allowed seven passed balls (fifth in the league) this year and he's only thrown out 15 runners while allowing 59 stolen bases (second in the league).

So will Kendall help the Cubs? Certainly a switch to the NL and to Wrigley Field as his home field will help his bat. But it won't return him to his pre-2001 thumb injury form, nor will it even return him to his late Pittsburgh form in which he was mostly powerless but reached base 40% of the time and was a very useful player. He'll provide some leadership, though I don't know how helpful that will be beyond managing to not punch Carlos Zambrano in the face. Still, I think he's a better option than what the Cubs currently have behind the plate and if he can get on base at a decent clip, he might be better than Michael Barrett was for them. Will it be enough? I honestly don't know. My gut feeling is that if the Cubs pass the Brewers it won't be because of Kendall, but he might have just enough left in the tank to make a difference.