Michael Busch Had a Hole in His Swing. Now We Have a Moment to Remember it By.

[Matthew Trueblood]

Timing is everything. At a juncture in the season when the Chicago Cubs needed relief from a building narrative about blowing late leads; at a moment when Tuesday night's game desperately needed a quick resolution; and at the critical point in the flight of a conspicuously placed fastball, Michael Busch's timing was perfect.

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

It has been an uncomfortable, sometimes infuriating few weeks for the Cubs' rookie first baseman. After an early stretch during which the league didn't quite know what to do with Michael Busch, and during which he was able to play hero for a first-place team to which he's a newcomer, he fell into a perfectly ordinary rookie slump. He had big adjustments to make, and the best pitchers in the world were making it hard for him to execute them. Painfully, though, that slump came just when his team needed him most, with their two best hitters briefly shelved by injuries.

Let's go back in time a bit. When the Cubs came home from their nine-game West Coast road trip, Busch was on top of the world. In his first 70 plate appearances for his new team, he had batted .317/.400/.667, and his streak of five straight games with a home run helped the club eke out a winning record on a difficult swing through San Diego, Seattle, and Arizona. To that point, he had nine walks and nine extra-base hits. That much good stuff will make even 19 strikeouts in 70 trips to the plate seem insignificant. For as long as one can sustain such impressive power and plate discipline, those strikeouts are insignificant.

Unsurprisingly, though, the good times couldn't last forever. After a scheduled travel day and a rainout, the Cubs resumed their season against the Marlins on Apr. 20. Busch had two hits in the nightcap of that doubleheader, but in that game, a telling trouble spot got exposed, and the league worked it ruthlessly over the ensuing fortnight. Even counting those two knocks, from Apr. 20 through Monday, Busch batted .190/.210/.276, in 62 plate appearances. He struck out 25 times, walked just once, and only scratched out four extra-base hits. He didn't hit a home run over those 16 games.

Here's where the trouble began, on the night of Apr. 20.

That's a pretty innocuous pitch, really. Rookie pitcher Roddery Muñoz probably didn't even mean to do it, but he missed high and arm side and threw a good backdoor cutter. It locked up Busch for a called strikeout. These things happen.

As it turned out, though, that was the key that started to unlock the mystery of Busch for MLB pitchers. Busch, like a good number of modern left-handed hitters, had a hole in his swing up and away--especially on good fastballs. The Astros came into town right after the Marlins left, and they hammered Busch with pitches in that quadrant, with great success. Busch tried to adjust, and it's not as though he whiffed on it every time, but he couldn't get ahead of or on top of the high heat on the outer half.

Word spreads quickly in MLB. Not every team even uses advance scouts anymore, but most do, and Busch's vulnerability was easy to spot, be it by a live scout or a simple check of the data that all teams have and use. When the Astros series was over and the Cubs headed to Boston, the Red Sox had the same treatment waiting for Busch.

Busch tried moving his sightlines up and out, to find that pitch, but he still got fooled. As many hitters do when the league finds a weakness and begins exploiting it, he tried laying off those offerings, too, when he began to despair of connecting with them. As all hitters who try that do, though, he soon found out that big-league pitchers locate too well to allow any success based purely on not swinging in such a wide swath of the zone.

Failing for the first time in his young career and feeling mounting pressure, Busch began to press. One key factor in his early success had been a steadfast refusal to expand and chase, but his resolve broke down and the strikeouts piled up.

Pitchers don't stop attacking a hitter in a particular way until what they're trying stops working, and throwing him high, outside stuff (especially fastballs) kept working. They kept throwing it. He kept spiraling.

Here's the thing: Busch's swing was never disqualifyingly flawed. He didn't need to make some massive mechanical overhaul. That doesn't mean no mechanical tweak was necessary, but it wasn't anything major. Busch is a really good hitter, with the bat speed and the smart hands to adjust to and hit just about anything. For a long time, he was just missing conviction. To hit the high fastball, you have to decide to sit on it. When you do, if you're sufficiently talented, you can get around on it and barrel it up.

Poor Enyel De Los Santos. He located his only pitch to Busch perfectly, according to the scouting report. He just didn't get the important update: Busch, be it in some semi-permanent fashion or just for one at-bat in the rain, found conviction. He was sitting on the high, outside fastball.

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This isn't the end of a story. Busch might not have fully solved his problem with that pitch, and even if he did, there will soon be another round of difficult adjustments due. It is, however, the end of a slump. That swing is the kind that gives a hitter the confidence that abandons them when they're getting beaten in the same place over and over. Pitchers will have to move on, at least for a bit. And in the meantime, Busch secured the most exciting win of the season to date.

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[We Got The Whole 9]

I disagree that it's the end of a slump or that pitchers will move on from attacking that zone. He could easily go 1 for his next 20 and slumps don't just end when a player hits a HR, but this article is so spot-on. Just watching his ABs over the last few weeks you could see the pattern emerging. Pitchers would start him off with a backdoor breaking ball or cutter and then relentlessly pound that up-and-away zone. I am happy that he made them pay - what I would like to see is for him to sit on more pitches in that zone, and crush them to LCF. I think he gets too pull-happy. Especially at home, it would behoove him to take advantage of the shortest LCF in the league. Getting too pull-happy forced a lot of whiffs and ground balls.