One Thing Each Cubs Hitter Can Improve Upon in 2026

[RandallPnkFloyd]

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images

The Chicago Cubs enter 2026 as a team that looks largely the same offensively. Some dynamics will shift, of course. Alex Bregman is replacing both Matt Shaw and Kyle Tucker, in two different ways. Moisés Ballesteros is likely to get the first shot as the team's designated hitter, and the platoon partner for both Ballesteros and first baseman Michael Busch is newcomer Tyler Austin.

On a team with so little turnover, certain adjustments are going to need to be made on an individual level in order for this offense to ascend. What those adjustments look like, however, differs from hitter to hitter. Let's take a look at what the team's presumed starters at each position (sans Ballesteros, given uncertainty around his role) need to tweak ahead of the upcoming season.

Carson Kelly: Sustain the Approach
Few hitters were better than Carson Kelly last April, regardless of position. Kelly slashed .360/.507/.840, for a 257 wRC+. It was the kind of month that props up your numbers for the entire year. Unfortunately, things didn't really carry over into the subsequent months for the Cubs' starting catcher. Some of that is natural regression, but a lot of it is due to him losing his approach. Kelly's only two above-average months were April & July. It's not a coincidence that those two months featured his lowest chase rates (very impressive 17% marks). That rate increased steadily over the past two months of the year. The result? His walk rate was nearly cut in half and his strikeout rate spiked by nearly eight percentage points. Plate discipline erodes when players don't get enough time off, and Kelly took on a heavy workload after injuries sidelined Miguel Amaya. Regardless of how much he plays, though, Kelly needs to exercise more consistent patience.

Michael Busch: Improve Bat Speed
Busch had an excellent 2025. He continued to improve his approach and drove his power figure up, to the tune of 34 home runs and a .261 ISO that was nearly 70 points above what he posted as a rookie. However, Busch's swing is extraordinarily slow for a slugger. His 69.6 MPH average swing speed was ahead of only Nico Hoerner among Cubs hitters last season. He generates tons of squared-up contact (28.9 percent of swings), but didn't gain much traction in the blasts department, which links the ideal contact with a fast swing. While Busch's home run and ISO totals each landed in the top 15, his blast rate was just 76th in the league. There's a nearly unavoidable tradeoff between swing speed and barrel accuracy, and Busch favored the former last year, with stellar results. Still, he might need to rebalance those two objectives to have a similarly strong 2026.

Nico Hoerner: Zone Awareness
We recently profiled Hoerner, who saw a slight bump in his power output in the second half of 2025 after it was absent for most of the year. There's a bit of evidence that it was due to increased action on fastballs inside the strike zone, but there is more that indicates it was due to where in the zone Hoerner was swinging. Much of his power comes on the inner third of the plate. Even with the slowest swing on the current roster, it stands to reason that a fusion of the two ideas—wherein Hoerner concentrates on fastballs within that preferred zone—could yield more consistent power outcomes. They'd still be modest, but it would be a way for Hoerner to take a step forward. It might cost him plate coverage, though, so he'd need to be slightly more disciplined in order to make that shift in focus work.

Dansby Swanson: Swap Power for Contact
Swanson's .173 ISO in 2025 was his best since 2021. Despite just average bat speed, he finished in the 80th percentile in hard-hit rate (47.8%) and the 74th percentile in barrel rate (11.7%). A concentration on fastballs helped, as his 55.6% swing rate against them was not only his highest against any pitch group but the highest rate of his career. The issue is that he's not generating enough contact to make the power outcomes as impactful. His contact rate was down about two percentage points from the two previous years, and he whiffed at a higher frequency than at any point in his career (14.3% of all pitches seen). His contact rate on pitches outside the zone dropped by roughly 12 percentage points, too, which is indicative of a player selling out on a pitch type (fastballs) even if not totally selling out for power itself. That loss of out-of-zone contact is also part of the aging curve for most hitters, so he's unlikely to recover it. He'll have to be more focused on contact just to sustain his current level. There's still value in the bat, but more contact would help it to be realized with more regularity—even if it has to come at the expense of taking the occasional fastball.

Alex Bregman: Sustain
This is more of an incomplete case, as we haven't seen Alex Bregman suit up for the Cubs yet. In theory, Bregman's profile should play better at Wrigley Field than most right-handed hitters. He's not a pure pull-side guy, leaning on left-center for his power more than yanking it down the line like Isaac Paredes. Everything else about his profile screams success; he has a relentless approach with upper-tier contact skills. Given that he's not a barrel merchant, though, continuing to make the type of contact that he does will be crucial for him to avoid the pitfalls that ruined the Chicago stays of guys like Paredes and Trey Mancini.

Ian Happ: Increased Aggression
Much of Happ's value lies in his plate discipline, so it'd be foolhardy to suggest he overhaul his approach. Part of the nature of working deep counts, though, is that you miss out on fastballs earlier in at-bats and are prone to an above-average strikeout rate. He obviously compensates well with his walk rate, but there's something to be said for Happ trying to be more aggressive in certain instances. In five of the last six seasons, Happ's biggest slugging output came on fastballs. Generally, however, it's that pitch type against which he swings least often (something that is even more true inside the zone). While he shouldn't abandon his sense of the zone, being more selectively aggressive could lead to a more impactful presence wherever he lands in the 2026 lineup.

Pete Crow-Armstrong: Make More Contact
The upside—the superstar potential—for Crow-Armstrong is obvious. The issue is that neither his speed nor his power can show up if he's forever chasing, and missing. He swung at roughly the same rate of pitches in 2025 as the year before, with a nice bump in the in-zone rate against the chase rate. He also made significantly less contact when he did chase, though. It might be unreasonable to expect him to tamp down the swing rate itself, but more contact could beget more positive results, especially given that speed. He wouldn't be the first aggressive hitter to make that profile work, but it's going to require more competence in generating contact than we've seen to date. Of course, the surest path to more contact is better swing decisions.

Seiya Suzuki: Work the Edges
Seiya Suzuki is one of the game's most patient hitters, but his approach is highly specific—and the problematic aspects of his patience show up in one particular segment of the hitting zone. As such, Suzuki's situation isn't all that similar to Happ, who could stand to swing with more regularity in general. Suzuki needs to figure out how, on occasion, to anticipate and attack even well-executed pitches on the edges of the zone. His -21 run value on pitches on the shadow of the zone (within a ball's diameter of the edge of the zone, in either direction) was better than only Swanson's -25, among last year's Cubs. Only Busch and Tucker featured a better cumulative run value than Suzuki's 18, which speaks to the opportunities missed by being so precise with the approach. It's not about opening up the zone fully, but taking advantage of better preparation by not giving in to pitchers who locate well.

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[Development DL]

PD pieces are one of my reasons for subscribing here . Nice work . 

[Arlen]

TY.
Pete Crowe-Armstrong: mind the strike zone and his ability to hit certain pitches and get into Ted Williams territory.

Edited February 23 by Arlen