On Michael Barrett

Regarding baseball, I am not an expert in any sense, and certainly not in the sense that I get paid for my opinions, or in the sense that I’m right the most often like Vegas oddsmakers, who also get paid for their judgments now that I think about it. But I do watch all of nearly every Cubs game, and it’s the games most people click off halfway or the stretches people stop watching late in the season when you notice the chronic problems. In any case, I think I was right before 2003 and again before 2004 when I said that the Cubs biggest weaknesses – single likely areas that would cause them to lose winnable games – had been catcher, bullpen, and leadoff hitter. The other things that went right would not have been enough in that magical season of 2003 had not Lofton and Borowski come out of nowhere, and if we’re being honest we were lucky they got so far with a lineup featuring Damian Miller hitting .233.

Before the ’04 season Hendry got LaTroy Hawkins to shore up the bullpen, which turned out to be tragic – and I don’t use that loosely – and Michael Barrett to catch. Barrett had been a guy Hendry had his eye on for a while. Nowadays, the Hendry bashers seem to forget this move, neglecting to credit Hendry for how big a pickup Barrett has been. (As for leadoff, let’s just say "Finally!" and smile to ourselves every game Juan Pierre steps to the plate, especially when the Cubs are 12-8 at the end of April and he's already scored 20 runs.)

When 2004 began, don’t forget that SI put the Hell Freezes Over cover title up to forecast the Cubs winning the series; Vegas had them at 4-1 to win the World Series, behind only the villains, the Yankees and Red Sox; and even guys like Peter Gammons were picking them. I read a line recently in Gene Wojciechowski’s book Cubs Nation which says, “Noted baseball author and Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell writes: ‘By September, there will be serious discussion of whether the current Chicago rotation – yes, the Cubs – is the best five-man assemblage in history.’” That was about 20 games into the season.

With that much momentum and all of Cubs Nation on board, many of us still had the same concerns: leadoff, catcher, and bullpen. But catcher was the least of them. We were starting to like Michael Barrett.

I still like Barrett. A lot. And I think he’s going to have a big season. The difference between Barrett going .280 / 16/ 60+ and .290 / 24 / 80+ is a big one in this lineup. Those improvements, if they happen, mean several more wins.

Barrett is vocal in the clubhouse, or at least talkative to the press, although we aren’t there behind the scenes to see whether he’s the kind of leader to rally players with his words or all that. Maybe he is. But even if he’s not, he’s a good hitting catcher, he showed signs of throwing out runners exceptionally in the early weeks of last season, and he hustles and works hard every game. We saw all of this those qualities right from the beginning.

We like Barrett because he says the right things, while at the same time being candid. We can tell when he’s frustrated, and when he botched the rundown last year he was the first to admit and call himself to account for his mistake. And then we read about him working to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Of course, with this era of the Cubs it has always been – and will be again – about the starting pitching. And I’m not suggesting that Barrett is better than Blanco or Damian Miller or some of the other guys the Cubs have had handling their staff. But he’s not bad.

I’m thinking about that night last May when Maddux struck out 10 Mets as some friends and I watched from the bleachers, one of those nights when for everyone involved, it’s just your night; a night where everyone falls into a flawless rhythm. And who was behind the plate? Not Blanco, Maddux’s former personal catcher so to speak, but Michael Barrett. That instance to me spoke as well of his skill catching a game as I had seen. Not that Barrett should take the credit for Maddux throwing pellets, but still.

Now Barrett has another year of hard work spent studying behind him, meaning that he’ll be familiar with the plan of attack on most opposing hitters. He’ll be a year more familiar with his pitchers, and Wrigley Field. It will be much less about preparation than concentration, using what he knows, and the way I figure it, that sort of maturity and knowledge will translate into a great season all around. Call it a hunch.

Barrett will be in a little bit of the spotlight early this year, since he’s playing in the World Baseball Classic. I hope the early competition gets him going because other than the pitching, one thing that could help the Cubs get going early is Barrett knocking RBIs from the second half of the lineup. With everything else they've got, and thinking about last season, a few more runs in a few close games will be enough.

Maybe he’ll put up steady numbers like he has the last two seasons. If so, that’ll be alright; he’s still better offensively than most catchers in the league. But with the frustrations and learning curves of the last two seasons behind him, I hope Barrett takes it up a level. And that the rest of the team comes with him. I'm not one for grand predictions, but let's just say that when Barrett is considered for the All Star Game I won't be surprised.