Carson Kelly Hits for the Cycle, and the Cubs Sure Look Poised to Get More from the Catcher Spot in 2025

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Cubs have gotten seven extra-base hits from their catchers in as many games to start this season. That's good by any standard, but it's only part of the story. Last year, they got just 37 extra-base hits from that position all year.

Image courtesy of © Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images

It was a fun, unexpected, special moment when Carson Kelly bounced and rolled into third base late in Monday night's blowout Cubs win over the A's. By reaching third base on a fly ball that bounced off the wall and got away from the Sacramento defenders, Kelly became the first player in over three decades to hit for the cycle while wearing a Cubs uniform. Fans of a certain age were very well aware of that fact, because for several years, now, it's been peculiar that the Cubs had gone so long without getting that specific type of massive day.

For one thing, it's funny that Kelly became the first guy to do this since 1993, because he arrives just at a time when the Cubs have lots and lots of better candidates to do so. Pete Crow-Armstrong, on his best day, threatens the cycle just by showing up. Matt Shaw, Seiya Suzuki, and Kyle Tucker not only combine speed and power, but have the aggressive instincts on the bases to get to third on balls where some players with similar raw speed would hold up at second base. Nico Hoerner is built to come up a homer shy of the cycle, really, but he runs into about 10 homers a year, so it wouldn't have shocked you if he'd done so on a night when he also managed to do the other three things.

In the years since 1993, the team has featured Christopher Morel and Javier Baez; Kris Bryant and Starlin Castro; Alfonso Soriano and the young (as well as the old) Sammy Sosa. If Corey Patterson, Arismendy Alcántara or Brennen Davis had panned out as the team hoped they would, they'd belong in the same conversation. At various points, they've had some of the game's most dynamic young hitters, the kinds of guys you actually expect to hit for the cycle. Yet, the last two to manage it are the slow-footed first baseman (Grace) and the middle-aged catcher (Kelly) whom you don't even expect to homer very often.

Baseball is beguiling that way. It also seems, at first blush, like Sutter Health Park is going to play as very friendly to hitters, so it might be that Kelly's will be just the first in a long line of unexpected outlier offensive performances. It was just one game, and in itself, it means little. The proof of that is in the new bond between Kelly (Chicago-born, but a year after Grace achieved his cycle) and Grace, in defiance of all those players whom you might have thought could do it at some point.

More saliently, though, we're starting to see clearly that the Cubs were right in their bets about the catching position this offseason. Not all of their roster construction choices look so sagacious, but in making the winning bid (a modest, two-year one) on Kelly and retaining Miguel Amaya as the primary backstop, the team looks awfully smart. Amaya already has four doubles and a torrent of hard contact on the young season. What was a black hole in the lineup last year looks like a relative strength this season. It's unlikely that Amaya and Kelly finish the season with an aggregate batting line much better than average, but average production itself would be above-average relative to catchers throughout the league.

It's too early to tell for sure whether he's made a change that will allow it to stick, but Kelly's swing speed is up about 2 mph this year, relative to the early part of last year.

 

Amaya, for whom bat speed was never the problem, seems to be increasingly comfortable with the set of big adjustments he made at the plate last summer. The biggest part of their games will continue to be defense; that's the nature of catchers. Already, though, each are reminding us all that there's a lot of value in having a backstop who can lengthen the lineup, too.

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[Yall Illin]

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