Article: Michael Busch's Missed Sunday Moment and Rookie Adjustments

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Chicago Cubs' lineup is only going to produce adequately if they get big hits from their rookie first baseman. Sunday provided some interesting insight into his upside, and into what he still needs to learn.

Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

If you just looked at the exit velocity and launch angle, Michael Busch appears to have gotten unlucky in the third inning Sunday. He sent Rangers center fielder back to the warning track on a long fly ball, hit at 106 miles per hour. If it flew exactly the same distance, to the same part of the park, it would have been a home run at Wrigley Field--and at 19 other MLB parks. It just died a bit shy of the deep wall to the left of dead center in Arlington.

Fans who were watching, though, know that the fault was not in his stars, but in his start time. Busch was up with Dansby Swanson in scoring position, in a game the Cubs led 3-2. He had gotten ahead of Texas starter Jon Gray 2-0, and he got a fastball, middle-middle, at 94 miles per hour. 

It's a well-struck ball, sure, but a ball in that spot, in that count, with a chance to drive in a run, has to be pulled. There's no reason to be using the big part of the field when it's 2-0, and when you have as discerning an eye as Busch does. He needed to be sitting fastball, and if he got a fat one, it needed to be bouncing around in the corner or spilling a fan's beer. Otherwise, he could always hold his fire and wait for a cookie on 2-1 or 3-0.

Hitters have a saying: You have to be yes, yes, yes, no. You can't start with the intention of taking a pitch, ever, and then catch up to the ball. You have to think 'swing' until some visual cue tells you to take, or take all the way without reserving an alternative. Obviously, the cues to which that change of plan can be pegged and the degree of aggressiveness in one's mindset will change slightly based on count, opponent, defensive alignment, and game situation, based on expectations and payoffs, but you have to get started on time and find ways to stop when necessary. If you have any other mental machinery in place, you'll never survive against big-league pitchers, with their overwhelming velocity, devastating secondary options, and ability to command the lot.

I'm not suggesting Busch doesn't have that mental machinery, or that he wasn't thinking 'yes, yes, yes' going into that 2-0 pitch. Clearly, though, he didn't quite have an aggressive enough mindset to get the bat head out and pull that ball into the gap, or over the wall. Busch generates good opposite-field power, which is why he's able to wait back and take such a patient tack at the plate. Sometimes, though, that's a double-edged sword.

If that hit had happened, and then the rest of the game had been perfectly normal, I wouldn't remark on this. Even veteran sluggers are sometimes late on fastballs--even ones in the middle of the zone, at non-elite velocities, with the count in their favor. One swing indicates little. Over his next three plate appearances, though, Busch swung at the next five pitches he saw.

I went through all the games since the start of 2023 for which we have pitch-by-pitch data on Busch's plate appearances. Do you know how many other times he swung at six straight pitches, across any number of trips to the plate? None. In fact, he never swung at six out of any seven pitches, or six out of eight. Busch is as patient as hitters come. It's a huge part of his game. Clearly, he himself was frustrated by that fly out that could have been more, because it pulled him out of his most comfortable and fruitful approach for most of the rest of the game.

Crucially, though, when he came up in the ninth, Busch returned to himself. Under plenty of pressure, in a tie game and with no one on base and one out, he drew a six-pitch walk against José Leclerc. Maybe that marks a minor retreat, back to the approach with which he's more comfortable, anyway, but it suited the situation gorgeously. For the second time in his first three games as a Cub, he scored the go-ahead run for the team in the ninth inning. He's going to get on base plenty, because he's a disciplined hitter and gets back into his comfort zone quickly when something throws off his equilibrium.

The big question for Busch is whether he can also be that other guy--the one who drives an RBI double or two-run homer in that third-inning situation, when aggressiveness is the order of the moment. If so, he can be a star, not much less productive than Anthony Rizzo was. We've already seen evidence of his raw power, two-strike approach, and even baserunning nous. If not, then he'll be confined to the bottom half of the lineup, where his job will be to keep lengthening games and ensuring extra chances for the real boppers at the top of the lineup. That's not a bad floor. Still, Sunday's game was a good reminder both of the impressiveness of his ceiling, and of the work left for him to reach it.

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[Transmogrified Tiger]

I struggle a little bit with the macro lens for this type of situation, because in a single at bat so much that may or may not repeat itself in the long term can manifest.  It's also prone to us seeing what we want or hope to see, we want Busch to be a success so him having an 'almost' moment burns brighter in our memories than the inning before when Seiya missed a backup slider that he could have sent to the moon with 1st/3rd & 2 out.  You could write an article with very similar tenor about that moment, and about the differences in being a strong hitter v. making the leap to be an elite bat, etc.

That said, my unscientific opinion after watching Busch for the weekend is that I'm reminded a lot of Happ.  Both are very patient, let the ball travel and will try to use all fields, and they're of similar stature and from the same side of the plate.  That'd be a very nice outcome because even with the higher bar at 1B, a 115-120 wRC+ from Busch would play very nicely in deepening the lineup to consistently be 6+ hitters of strong quality.  But what makes Ian Happ work well is excellent pitch recognition, and watching Busch's at bats against Gray I don't think he was picking up his repertoire very well(swinging through a 2 strike fastball, and not tracking the slider particularly closely).  Contrast that with Happ seeing the ball well enough that he went 2/3 w/ a 2B off Gray, and that's the small sample comparison I'd make about Busch's ability to make the jump at the MLB level.