Last week, I asked Cubs outfielder Matt Szczur what he thought about Tim Tebow professing interest in playing baseball.
“Uh, I don’t know what to think about it,” said Szczur, who played a little wildcat quarterback himself in his college days.
It was a nice way of saying, “Good luck dude.”
Then again, Jim Hendry still works in baseball. Give Hendry a DeLorean and some plutonium and he’ll convince a younger Tebow to give up football. Next thing you know, we’ll be talking about his MVP status.
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Szczur, a star wide receiver at Villanova, was part of Hendry’s experiment to draft better wide receivers than the Bears.
In 2006, Hendry drafted Notre Dame star wideout Jeff Samardzija in the fifth round of the amateur draft, giving him a $10 million deal to give up football.
In 2010, in Hendry’s last full season of running the baseball operations department, he drafted Szczur in the fifth round of the amateur draft.
When Szczur signed in 2010, he only got a $100,000 bonus. He started his minor league career with a 21-game hitting streak and then went back to college to play his senior season of football at Villanova. He was the most valuable player in the 2009 FCS national championship game his junior year and famously donated his bone marrow to a young leukemia patient while in school.
In a New York Times story his senior season, Szczur more than hinted that he wanted to give the NFL a chance, but after the 2010 season ended and before the NFL combine, the Cubs offered him more more money to give up the sport before the NFL draft. He got a $1.4 million contract.
Samardzija developed into a frontline pitcher with the Cubs and got his free agent bonanza in the offseason with the Giants. He’ll make more in guaranteed money than any Notre Dame football player.
As for Szczur, he’s settled into a fourth outfielder/first pinch-hitter role with the Cubs. The 27-year-old said he would’ve played in the NFL if baseball didn’t work out, but he doesn’t exactly miss the game.
“They’re going through football camp in 100 degree weather and I’m playing baseball in the most historic stadium in the world, pretty much,” he said.
Hendry used to say that football players were mentally prepared to make the jump to the big leagues. It used to be a running joke, but there’s something to the thinking.
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“I feel like [Hendry] knew that we were grinders,” Szczur said. “It’s tough to play both sports in college and the discipline you need to do both in college and still go to class…”
I talked with Szczur about being one of the last “Hendry guys,” and he said it was a fact he had just discussed the previous day.
Szczur and Javy Baez are the last of the Hendry draft picks on the Cubs. Willson Contreras predated them as a teenager signed out of Venezuela. All three are pretty valuable to Theo Epstein’s club.
It’s just a random note, but because of Kyle Schwarber’s season-ending injury, there are more Hendry draft picks than Epstein ones on the roster.
Szczur said he didn’t fret about being a Hendry guy when the regime change took place.
“I wasn’t really worried about it,” he said. “I knew if I produced they were going to like me and everyone else was going to like me.”
He’s not lacking in confidence, that’s for sure. And on a team full of young stars and big-money veterans (and also Chris Coghlan), Szczur has proven his worth. He’s currently second in the majors with 12 pinch-hits and coming off a two-homer game as a starter in Friday’s 13-2 Cubs win. He’s also an excellent defensive outfielder.
“I grind every day,” he said. “Everybody says it’s always about the journey. Every day I’m grinding until I get a contract.”
Presumably, he’ll keep “grinding” even after he gets a deal. Szczur talks about the “grind” more than Eric Nies and given his physique, which resembles an NFL receiver’s body as much as a baseball player’s, shows he’s serious.
His gameday routine, now enhanced by an actual indoor batting cage rather than a net in the clubhouse, would make any football coach proud.
For a guy who hopes to get one at-bat a night, Szczur puts in a full workday, starting with a disciplined hot tub and stretching routine when he gets to the park.
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“I’ll hit before the game and I’ll go in there the second inning with [Eric] Hinske and do my whole routine, the tee, flips” Szczur said. “I’ll go in the fourth inning with Henry Blanco and get BP, and then the ‘fuzz machine’ in the fifth or sixth. I don’t really want to wait around, so I stay on the bike and stay loose. Once I know I have the chance to get in, I’ll get with Hinske again and he’ll just flip, just so I stay loose. Because I don’t want to go up there cold. That puts me at risk of getting hurt and puts me at risk of not producing.”
Szczur has worked with hitting coach John Mallee and Hinske to add some loft to his swing, resulting in five homers in 128 at-bats, including a grand slam on April 29 in a 6-1 win over the Braves after coming in as a late-inning defensive replacement.
In 41 pinch-hit plate appearances, he’s 12-for-39 (.308) with a double, a triple, five RBIs and eight runs scored. In late and close situations, as a starter or a sub, he’s 7-for-25 with seven runs scored and four RBIs.
In innings seven through nine, according to Baseball-Reference, he’s hitting .354 (23-for-65) with two homers and 15 RBIs, though that might have something to do with the subpar relievers he’s facing. He’s hitting .347 against bullpens, compared to .264 against starters.
Szczur got a prime chance to pad his pinch-hitting stats Sunday night, coming up with the bases loaded and no outs against reliever St. Louis Matt Bowman in the bottom of the seventh.
Szczur hacked at the first pitch, a 90 mph fastball, but hit it to shallow center field, which was unable to send in Chris Coghlan from third. As it turned out, the Cubs didn’t score a run that inning and the bullpen imploded in the top of the eighth, allowing five runs in a 6-4 loss.
But on Friday he got his 19th start of the season and was a hero, hitting two homers and driving in three runs.
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Maddon, who also played football and baseball in college, appreciates Szczur’s value.
“Give this guy an opportunity and he’s going to do whatever he can to take advantage of it,” Maddon said.
After debuting in 2014, Szczur went up and down from Triple-A five times from May through August (according to ESPN’s transaction list), playing 70 games with the Iowa Cubs and 47 with the big leagues ones. He was out of minor league options this year, which gave him security with the big league club. Given his status, super-sub or not, he needed it.
Szczur’s friend Tommy La Stella is famously working out at home in New Jersey after refusing to report to Triple-A. He still had options when the Cubs had a roster crunch and he wasn’t happy about going down.
Because of his pinch-hitting prowess and defensive abilities, Szczur is a good fit on a playoff roster, especially playing for a manager who loves to mix and match.
But if La Stella somehow doesn’t come back, will the Cubs look for another left-handed hitter on the waiver wire this month? If Szczur is worried, he’s not showing it.
“I think I’ve put myself in a good situation,” he said.
When Szczur walks from the new clubhouse to the old one, where he takes those gametime cuts in the batting cage, forever sharpening his tools, he passes by Maddon’s inspirational slogans on the tunnel walls. They blend together after a while, but one stands out.
“I look at it every day,” he said. “‘Embrace the target’ and I always think about it.”