If a New Set of Angles Makes Seiya Suzuki a Viable Outfielder, Everything Changes for Cubs

[Matthew Trueblood]

Do the Cubs have a new backup option in center field? Saturday's box score would say yes! But your memories of the last two years are surely screaming no. But some of the player's fundamentals say yes! But...

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images

The 2025 Cubs have a whole lot of talent. At the moment, the big question about their position-player group is not the amount of talent, but how to align it in a way that makes it fully functional. Craig Counsell is the creative problem solver tasked with finding answers to that question, and he test-drove his latest idea in that vein on Saturday. Seiya Suzuki took the field at Sloan Park in Mesa as the center fielder, continuing a spring of giving him reps in the outfield but pushing it to a new extreme.

In a couple of games in right field, Suzuki has not looked noticeably better than he did in his first two-plus seasons with the Cubs. Even when he did make a couple of catches, they were more adventurous than they ought to have been, with last-second adjustments befitting a much more sharply hit ball on what should have been cans of corn, easily and smoothly caught. That was probably maddeningly familiar to Cubs fans, and to Counsell, who proactively moved Suzuki out of right field last year by sliding Cody Bellinger to right field as soon as the team's health permitted it.

The sky is clearer and the sun sits at different angles in March in Arizona than for much of the season in Chicago. A few wrestling matches with the ballistic baseball in one place don't automatically augur ill for one's efforts to handle flies in the other. Still, Suzuki is at a point where he has to earn back the benefit of the doubt in right. He hasn't done it this spring.

All along, though, the funny thing about Suzuki has been that he clearly possesses the raw tools to handle the outfield, and that he did so well enough over his career in Japan to win five Golden Glove Awards there. He's fast enough—his 28.3 feet-per-second Statcast Sprint Speed is virtually identical to that of Bellinger (28.4), and a half-step better than Ian Happ (27.9). He's much faster than Kyle Tucker (26.0, and only 26.6 even in 2023, if we want to give him grace for last year based on the shin fracture that halved his season). He has a stronger arm than Happ or Tucker, by a wide margin.

We know Suzuki was a plus defender in NPB, and he's shown flashes of some defensive ability even since coming to the Cubs. He's just had far too many misreads, often seeming to stem from miscalculations of the wind or issues with the sun or stadium lights. He's seemed a bit shy of the wall at Wrigley Field, which can be a real problem for corner outfielders there; navigating the well in the right-field corner and going into the sidewall with confidence is essential to playing that position. For decades, too, right field at Wrigley has been infamous as one of the league's toughest sun fields. 

Given all that, the paradoxically plausible approach with Suzuki might be to play him only in center field. That Sprint Speed is just a hair below that of the median center fielder for 2024, so despite his hulking physique, he's not short on raw athleticism. The angles of hook or slice on batted balls and the effect of the wind on them is more predictable for the balls that come to a center fielder than for those played by guys in the corners. The sun is a bit less of an issue in center than in right (and lights are less of an issue in center than in either corner) at just about every ballpark in the league. At Wrigley, at least, the dimensions limit the range demands of the center fielder and don't pose the same difficult questions that corner outfielders have to deal with.

He acquitted himself nicely Saturday, not only making the two fairly routine plays that the game offered him but making them look relatively easy. The first ball pushed him back and forced him to cope with the sun and the high sky, and he looked something less than perfectly comfortable, but he made a solid read and caught the ball without the last-second glove move or lunge that characterized so much of his work in right field over the last two years.

The sun and the lights are a huge portion of Suzuki's defensive problem. That's been increasingly clear of late, and with a close look at the Central League of NPB, it's not hard to see why. Two of Suzuki's main opponents there play their home games in domes. One plays in a stadium that faces more or less due south, and two play in ones that face north. The home stadium of the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, Suzuki's own NPB team, is at a latitude similar to that of Phoenix, not that of Chicago, and it faces almost due east. Right field was almost never afflicted with a tough sun during Suzuki's time in Japan.

So, is he a viable center fielder? Shockingly, it's possible. He'd need to be deployed very judiciously, shielded from days when the sun might be harsh in center, and if Pete Crow-Armstrong were to get hurt and miss a substantial amount of time, the Cubs would still call up Kevin Alcántara, rather than leaning on Suzuki. As an occasional stopgap and a way to turbo-boost the lineup against left-handed pitching, though, this wacky idea isn't necessarily all that wacky. Counsell was just getting Suzuki a few reps there in case an emergency situation arises, but he might evolve into a little (if only a very little) more than an emergency option there this season.

If you buy that, what an offense the Cubs can field against southpaws. They'd be able to stash Crow-Armstrong on the bench, insert Justin Turner as the DH, and start the lineup with some combination of Nico Hoerner, Turner, Tucker, Happ, Suzuki, and Dansby Swanson. Michael Busch, a better lefty at handling lefties, could stay in the lineup, but he'd bat seventh, shielding him from the lefty starter a bit and making it harder for an opposing manager to find their way through the lower half of the order by bringing on a right-handed reliever later in the contest. It's just one more path the team could build itself from the start of a game to a winning finish. Suzuki is a linchpin of the team's offense, but if he can become a viable defensive piece on a part-time basis, it would take them to a new level.

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[Bertz]

It would be great if playing in CF is easier for Seiya.  I've always heard that if you have the high level of athleticism for the position, skill-wise it's the easiest spot on the field.  And it's a good point about the lights that might add some Seiya-specific help.

It might also just be that with his problems it doesn't matter where he plays.  He has the speed, he has the arm, he's just kind of a putz out there and makes more mistakes than a typical OF.  So if he's going to make an extra misplay or two every month and otherwise be a plus outfielder, then does it matter if those misplays occur in Right or Center or Left?

[Big EZ]

Interesting idea and perhaps Seiya can be an emergency option in CF, but the last two years have shown us Seiya is an elite hitter and a below average OF. All of us keep saying "But Seiya was such a great defensive player in the NPB!" Well we know a lot of things don't always transfer from the NPB to the MLB. Seiya had a 140 wRC+ as a DH and a 130 wRC+ as a RF. The Cubs need Seiya to stay healthy this season (150 + games) and playing him a majority of the time at DH is a great way to help with that.