Is There Enough in Miles Mastrobuoni's Bat to Make Him a Playable Regular?

[RandallPnkFloyd]

Long about the second or third stellar play Miles Mastrobuoni made behind Justin Steele in his start last Friday, I started to have some surprising thoughts.

Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

The first thought was: Why would the Cubs play anybody but Miles Mastrobuoni at third base for the remainder of the year? The second was: Is Miles Mastrobuoni the most exciting player the Cubs have to offer? But once I talked myself down from each of those, I started to wonder something else. Given his utility and increasingly apparent defensive excellence, does Mastrobuoni have enough to offer on offense to make him a valued regular in this lineup?

I must admit, I’ve defied my typically preferred baseball archetype in matters of Mastrobuoni. Generally, I’m a fan of the utility type who offers upper-tier defense even if the bat doesn’t play. Perhaps my pro-Cubs bias has made me more dismissive of it in a higher-stakes scenario. But in those days where we’re slogging through a shaky pitching performance or a lineup absent of any production, Mastrobuoni has shown an ability to jumpstart the heart rate--if ever so slightly. Which brings me back to the original question: Is there anything of value in that bat?

Mastrobuoni has 65 plate appearances at the big-league level this year. The slash includes a .172 average and .262 OBP, to go along with a .034 ISO. His wRC+ is 41. In most respects, it’s an extension of last year. Mastrobuoni finished with 149 plate appearances at the highest level, with a .241 average, .308 OBP, .060 ISO, and wRC+ of 71. I’m not going to blame myself for wondering what the point was, given numbers that look like that. At the same time, though, there are some interesting things happening.

In his first 17 plate appearances with Tampa Bay in 2022, Mastrobuoni struck out six times. It was a 35.3 K% to go along with only a single walk (5.9%). Last year, he cut the K% to 21.5 and jumped the BB% up a bit to 8.7, in a much more expansive sample. This year, he’s at 13.6 on the K% side and an impressive 10.6% rate for walks. It’s all a minuscule sample, but bear with me.

Comparing only the two Cubs years (given the larger samples they provide), Mastrobuoni has a higher swing rate thus far in 2024 (40.4%) than he did in 2023 (37.4%). But he’s raised the in-zone swing rate by roughly six percentage points, and dropped the chase rate by about three. It’s helped him to move his overall contact rate up from 78.8% last year to 82.4% this year. His whiff rate has fallen slightly, while his called strike rate has dropped by about 4%. Some zone awareness and subsequent aggression within the zone are apparent.

It's also important to note that virtually any scouting report you can find on Mastrobuoni from his Tampa Bay days is going to mention his on-base skills. Sure enough, he walked at a 21.8% clip in 2023 and a 14.3% rate this year in Iowa. His on-base there was .448 last year and .361 this year.

There’s also a possibility for slightly more power. His ISO figures in Iowa the last two seasons have read .178 and .183, though it's way, way easier to hit a ball out of Principal Park than it is to leave any big-league stadium. He’s just been working on the ground a bit too much (46.7 GB% this year) to realize it at the top level. He’s making reasonably good contact (38.7 hard-hit% combined in the two seasons). He’s pinned down by a .174 BABIP, more than anything.

This is all to say that I don’t think Mastrobuoni has a play-him-everyday kind of offensive skill set. But I think the approach and contact trends are such that he does have more to offer than we’ve seen so far. There appears to be potential for legitimate value out of the utility role. Depending on the route the Cubs go at the trade deadline, we could be in for the first extended run for Miles Mastrobuoni to show us something on offense. 

I’m at a point where I’d like to see it.

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[sneakypower]

 

  

[Bertz]

I do think Mastro's got more offensive production in the tank than he's shown thus far, but we're talking like an 80 or 90 something wRC+ depending on how aggressively you platoon him.  The defense has looked spectacular this year so I'm happy to give him more playing time, but if he's a starter on this team things went really off the rails or he hit like a 99th percentile outcome.

He's much more likely to be this generation's Tommy La Stella than anything more.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

First things first, the answer to the question is Betteridge's Law.  But if you wanted to make the bull case for Mastrobuoni as a player:

He's pretty consistently hit at a good level at AAA, a 122 wRC+ over 1000 PA, with 13%/19% BB/K.  The plate discipline in particular separates him from Madrigals of the world among contact/low-power bats. ZiPS seems to think that translates okay, they estimate him for a 93 wRC+, which if you combine with slightly above average defense is pretty close to a league average play.  He also adds value on the bases, across AAA and MLB he's 55/64 in SB.

 

But I wouldn't put money on the ZiPS forecast, as his lack of power is probably going to lead to pitchers more fearlessly pounding the zone and make him more at the whims of the BABIP gods.  Plus as a *regular* his profile is not one the Cubs can afford in a lineup that has Hoerner and probably PCA(to say nothing of the catchers).  He is however, a decent bench fit, as there is no 150 game 3B on the roster, and he's the only LHH for 2B/SS/3B on the 40 man unless you stretch Busch, and no other internal options appear imminent(Shaw, Triantos, & Vazquez are all RHH).

 

As it stands, he's perfectly fine as a 26th man option you can yo-yo to Iowa through next year.  If he starts living up to that ZiPS line and there's opportunity you can give him more platoon sided bats, but the best case scenario is that he's written in pencil on the 26 man roster for 2025 similar to Tauchman in security(but not in quantity of playing time), there's just not a path to being more than that unless there was an overhaul of the roster that won't and shouldn't happen.