Amid a Stormy Present, Matt Shaw Showing His Ryne Sandberg Potential Brightens Cubs' Future

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images

Suddenly, you can't make a mistake to Matt Shaw. He's not just coming along slowly, anymore; he's breaking out. Shaw is batting .328/.349/.770 in 63 plate appearances since the All-Star break, and he looks to be turning a corner with seven weeks left in his rookie campaign. In fact, importantly, he's literally turning a corner more often.

About three weeks ago, @Jason Ross detailed the fact that Shaw had opened up his batting stance and was subtly better oriented to both cover the whole zone and get the barrel around the ball. Our foremost Shaw scholar, Jason wrote this within that piece:

Quote

All of the tweaks prior to this one are still there. He is still closer to the plate, his hands are still up, his leg kick is still much more muted. But now, he's able to pull the ball. This last tweak is small, just inches, but in a game of inches, those matter. Shaw is clearing his own body now. I wouldn't expect his spray chart to remain so opposite-field heavy. He still can go the other way with authority; he hit a ball over 100 mph to the right side in the plate appearance directly after his home run against Boston, and hit a third home run, a 99.8-mph shot to center field, on Wednesday. But for Shaw, it's important to incorporate his pull side. That is what will take him from a hitter whom expected data likes, to someone who gets actual, real-world hits.

He was right at the time, and the games since have borne that out for everyone to see. Jason has been a Shaw believer all along, and there was a longer and tougher stretch than anyone wanted to see in which Shaw's huge leg kick and the team's failure to prepare him for what a successful big-league hitter really has to be conspired to make him a dreadful hitter. Near the end of that piece, though, Jason made a declaration that has also been borne out gorgeously since:

"I think this is finally it. He's putting it all together; each of those little tweaks have made him a much better hitter."

Here's how he's turned out to be right.

Yes, the key for Shaw was always to pull the ball. The big question, though, was how he'd ever do so, with a stride that still cut him off pretty badly, even after the adjustment to open his initial stance. The big leg kick and the shy, kid-trying-not-to-be-noticed closed stance that he started the year with utterly precluded getting around the ball and driving it to left field; he didn't have the time or the bat speed to do it. As a reminder, here's what Shaw's stance and stride looked like in his first taste of the majors.

Look at the angles his feet are creating, and look at the purple dot that signifies his average contact point. That's not going to yield any consistent ability to pull the ball. Shaw came back after a sojourn in Iowa and looked better for chunks of June, as we saw him reduce that leg kick (making it harder for opposing pitchers to mess with his timing) and start to move toward the plate, covering it better.

He's also catching the ball a bit farther in front of himself in this image, which is important. Still, most of the time, it felt like he was out of space to get the barrel to the ball by the time he found it, but at least this version of Shaw was capable of getting to both inside and outside pitches.

Now, here's what Shaw's stance, stride and contact point look like in August.

As Jason had already told you, his stance is more open. The stride still takes him into the pitch a bit, which helps him cover the plate—but it's no longer working against his power at all, because look at that beautiful purple dot way out in front of home plate. Shaw's biggest difference, since the All-Star break, isn't even the physical changes he's made in setup or orientation; it's in timing.

If you start early enough to get all the way through the hitting zone and catch the ball out front, like this, the long stride and the still-unconventional setup Shaw uses works. You stay cut-off through much of a swing like this one, but if your plan is to attack the ball way out in front, you'll find the ability to extend your arms and accelerate the barrel just in time to whang the ball off into the left-field corner. Even when a pitcher goes to a breaking ball, if they miss their location and you stay back just enough, you can backspin it out to left-center. Sonny Gray found out about Shaw's evolving capacity there the hard way, Sunday night.

He's so committed to this approach (and having such success with it, by starting early and being on time, out front) that Shaw has become a dead pull hitter since the break. In fact, looking at his spray chart, you might be forgiven for asking: "Hey, didn't the Cubs trade away Isaac Paredes?"

It reads like a typical development arc, on an impressively accelerated timeline: Shaw came into the league letting the ball travel and thinking about the opposite field, but as he's cleaned up his mechanics and gotten more confident, he's also gone to get the pitch farther out front—and he's no longer trying to be the modern, conventional hitter. He's swinging flat through the zone, but by getting to the ball early, he's ensuring that he can pull it. Lifting it is just a matter of knowing more about how pitchers will attack him and being more ready for the way big-league pitchers' stuff works.

When you actually watch Shaw hit, though, it doesn't evoke Paredes. He's quite a bit more like some of the sluggers of the 1980s, whose swings were flat like his and who got to their power by being very intentional about it. One exemplar is Brian Downing, the catcher-turned-outfielder who cracked 275 big-league homers after finding his power quite late in his career. Like Shaw, Downing was just 5-foot-10, and his listed weight is just 170 pounds. (In reality, Downing played most of his career closer to 190, which makes him a fair comp to Shaw's listed 185 pounds.) Downing wasn't considered small by the standards of his era, as Shaw might be by the standards of this one, but his power was similarly surprising—and, similarly, it absolutely all came from his dedication to being early and pulling the ball.

There's a more fun comp to throw on him, though. The other guy I can't stop thinking about, as I watch Shaw go on this tear and find himself as a hitter, is Ryne Sandberg.

Sandberg didn't come up as a slugger. He came to bat almost 1,400 times in his first two seasons with the Cubs, playing mostly at third base at ages 22 and 23. He hit a total of 15 home runs and slugged .361 in those seasons. Then, in 1984—well, you know what happened. He suddenly smacked 19 homers, to go with 36 doubles and 19 triples. The big secret—the key change: he started pulling the ball. A lot.

It's tempting to imagine that the dead-pull hitter is an inelegant modern invention, created by sabermetric coneheads to optimize everyone. That's half-true, at most. Henry Aaron's career changed radically when he decided to begin pulling the ball more consistently. Reggie Smith blossomed into a star when he learned that he couldn't go back through the box with the inside pitch and find any success in the majors. Sandberg, Downing and dozens of others have hewed out great careers by tapping into more power, because they realized that pulling the ball isn't an ignoble, one-dimensional plan. It's the result of a good, well-rounded process at the plate.

Sandberg also made some changes to his setup in 1984, relative to 1982 and 1983. The biggest changes, though, were to how he started his hands and what he sought to do at the plate. Shaw is doing the same things, now. As the modern game compels players to do, he's compressing three years of the Hall of Famer's development into a handful of months. That doesn't mean he'll become a Hall of Famer, himself, but it's a clear step toward stardom—or at least a consistent level of quality on the infield.

Shaw's long-term future might be at second base, as Sandberg's was. His medium-term future is certainly as a more important offensive player, further up the lineup card than he's been even over the last month. Right now, though, it's the short-term future that matters most—the present, even. If Shaw can sustain this surge, it might be the key to the Cubs' success for the balance of the season.

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[Rcal10]

3 hours ago, Matthew Trueblood said:

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images

Suddenly, you can't make a mistake to Matt Shaw. He's not just coming along slowly, anymore; he's breaking out. Shaw is batting .328/.349/.770 in 63 plate appearances since the All-Star break, and he looks to be turning a corner with seven weeks left in his rookie campaign. In fact, importantly, he's literally turning a corner more often.

About three weeks ago, @Jason Ross detailed the fact that Shaw had opened up his batting stance and was subtly better oriented to both cover the whole zone and get the barrel around the ball. Our foremost Shaw scholar, Jason wrote this within that piece:

He was right at the time, and the games since have borne that out for everyone to see. Jason has been a Shaw believer all along, and there was a longer and tougher stretch than anyone wanted to see in which Shaw's huge leg kick and the team's failure to prepare him for what a successful big-league hitter really has to be conspired to make him a dreadful hitter. Near the end of that piece, though, Jason made a declaration that has also been borne out gorgeously since:

"I think this is finally it. He's putting it all together; each of those little tweaks have made him a much better hitter."

Here's how he's turned out to be right.

Yes, the key for Shaw was always to pull the ball. The big question, though, was how he'd ever do so, with a stride that still cut him off pretty badly, even after the adjustment to open his initial stance. The big leg kick and the shy, kid-trying-not-to-be-noticed closed stance that he started the year with utterly precluded getting around the ball and driving it to left field; he didn't have the time or the bat speed to do it. As a reminder, here's what Shaw's stance and stride looked like in his first taste of the majors.

Look at the angles his feet are creating, and look at the purple dot that signifies his average contact point. That's not going to yield any consistent ability to pull the ball. Shaw came back after a sojourn in Iowa and looked better for chunks of June, as we saw him reduce that leg kick (making it harder for opposing pitchers to mess with his timing) and start to move toward the plate, covering it better.

He's also catching the ball a bit farther in front of himself in this image, which is important. Still, most of the time, it felt like he was out of space to get the barrel to the ball by the time he found it, but at least this version of Shaw was capable of getting to both inside and outside pitches.

Now, here's what Shaw's stance, stride and contact point look like in August.

As Jason had already told you, his stance is more open. The stride still takes him into the pitch a bit, which helps him cover the plate—but it's no longer working against his power at all, because look at that beautiful purple dot way out in front of home plate. Shaw's biggest difference, since the All-Star break, isn't even the physical changes he's made in setup or orientation; it's in timing.

If you start early enough to get all the way through the hitting zone and catch the ball out front, like this, the long stride and the still-unconventional setup Shaw uses works. You stay cut-off through much of a swing like this one, but if your plan is to attack the ball way out in front, you'll find the ability to extend your arms and accelerate the barrel just in time to whang the ball off into the left-field corner. Even when a pitcher goes to a breaking ball, if they miss their location and you stay back just enough, you can backspin it out to left-center. Sonny Gray found out about Shaw's evolving capacity there the hard way, Sunday night.

He's so committed to this approach (and having such success with it, by starting early and being on time, out front) that Shaw has become a dead pull hitter since the break. In fact, looking at his spray chart, you might be forgiven for asking: "Hey, didn't the Cubs trade away Isaac Paredes?"

It reads like a typical development arc, on an impressively accelerated timeline: Shaw came into the league letting the ball travel and thinking about the opposite field, but as he's cleaned up his mechanics and gotten more confident, he's also gone to get the pitch farther out front—and he's no longer trying to be the modern, conventional hitter. He's swinging flat through the zone, but by getting to the ball early, he's ensuring that he can pull it. Lifting it is just a matter of knowing more about how pitchers will attack him and being more ready for the way big-league pitchers' stuff works.

When you actually watch Shaw hit, though, it doesn't evoke Paredes. He's quite a bit more like some of the sluggers of the 1980s, whose swings were flat like his and who got to their power by being very intentional about it. One exemplar is Brian Downing, the catcher-turned-outfielder who cracked 275 big-league homers after finding his power quite late in his career. Like Shaw, Downing was just 5-foot-10, and his listed weight is just 170 pounds. (In reality, Downing played most of his career closer to 190, which makes him a fair comp to Shaw's listed 185 pounds.) Downing wasn't considered small by the standards of his era, as Shaw might be by the standards of this one, but his power was similarly surprising—and, similarly, it absolutely all came from his dedication to being early and pulling the ball.

There's a more fun comp to throw on him, though. The other guy I can't stop thinking about, as I watch Shaw go on this tear and find himself as a hitter, is Ryne Sandberg.

Sandberg didn't come up as a slugger. He came to bat almost 1,400 times in his first two seasons with the Cubs, playing mostly at third base at ages 22 and 23. He hit a total of 15 home runs and slugged .361 in those seasons. Then, in 1984—well, you know what happened. He suddenly smacked 19 homers, to go with 36 doubles and 19 triples. The big secret—the key change: he started pulling the ball. A lot.

It's tempting to imagine that the dead-pull hitter is an inelegant modern invention, created by sabermetric coneheads to optimize everyone. That's half-true, at most. Henry Aaron's career changed radically when he decided to begin pulling the ball more consistently. Reggie Smith blossomed into a star when he learned that he couldn't go back through the box with the inside pitch and find any success in the majors. Sandberg, Downing and dozens of others have hewed out great careers by tapping into more power, because they realized that pulling the ball isn't an ignoble, one-dimensional plan. It's the result of a good, well-rounded process at the plate.

Sandberg also made some changes to his setup in 1984, relative to 1982 and 1983. The biggest changes, though, were to how he started his hands and what he sought to do at the plate. Shaw is doing the same things, now. As the modern game compels players to do, he's compressing three years of the Hall of Famer's development into a handful of months. That doesn't mean he'll become a Hall of Famer, himself, but it's a clear step toward stardom—or at least a consistent level of quality on the infield.

Shaw's long-term future might be at second base, as Sandberg's was. His medium-term future is certainly as a more important offensive player, further up the lineup card than he's been even over the last month. Right now, though, it's the short-term future that matters most—the present, even. If Shaw can sustain this surge, it might be the key to the Cubs' success for the balance of the season.

 

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So great to see Shaw becoming an offensive force. It is especially nice to stop seeing all the Cam Smith love and the criticizing the Cubs for trading him and keeping Shaw. Right about now it appears they made the right choice. Which is why we don’t hear about Smith any longer. 100 less AB with 2 more homers, a higher OPS+ and his BABIP is only .255. If/ when that comes up, like it should, he will be even better. Look forward to him at 3rd for a good while. Happy the Cubs FO realized his talent. Along with his bat coming alive, he has also proved to be a solid 3rd baseman. 

[17 Seconds]

17 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

So great to see Shaw becoming an offensive force. It is especially nice to stop seeing all the Cam Smith love and the criticizing the Cubs for trading him and keeping Shaw. Right about now it appears they made the right choice. Which is why we don’t hear about Smith any longer. 100 less AB with 2 more homers, a higher OPS+ and his BABIP is only .255. If/ when that comes up, like it should, he will be even better. Look forward to him at 3rd for a good while. Happy the Cubs FO realized his talent. Along with his bat coming alive, he has also proved to be a solid 3rd baseman. 

i've seen people claiming it was smith vs shaw and i don't get  that. they were never trading shaw for 1 year of tucker.

i'm not saying the tucker trade was bad, but they could have kept shaw at 2b and cam smith at 3b long-term. giving up cam smith will still be bad if they don't se-sign tucker. shaw being good wouldn't change that.

[Victor Reichman]

So glad we didn't take the bait to sign Suarez and give up top prospects. I urged long ago that Shaw is our 3B period. Of course he struggled when he first came up, but even then his defense has saved several runs. We have a terrific IF and a terrific OF. However, I would not sign Tucker to a long term deal which Boras will want. We have Cassie, Alcantara and more and Suzuki plays a respectable RF.