A Timely Turn: Michael Busch Trending in Right Direction (Literally) at Right Time

Image courtesy of Katie Stratman-Imagn Images

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If you read this site, you're probably a lot like me. You might have grown up watching Steve Stone do color commentary on Cubs TV broadcasts, or you might have been slightly too young or too old for that, but you've probably at least seen him call a few games. (He's still a Chicago baseball fixture, after all.) Be it Stone or one of his many contemporaries and kindred spirits, though, some commentator has surely said it on a game you've watched: When a guy has a closed stance, he wants you to pitch him inside. He's inviting it. When a guy has an open stance, he's hunting the ball away.

Maybe, like me, you first heard that when you were a kid, and it didn't make sense right away. After all, that guy with the closed stance, his front foot is in the way of him getting to that inside offering. The one with the open stance is awfully far from the outside third of the plate, isn't he? The answer to the not-even-a-riddle, of course, is that how a player stands often betrays something about how they move once they get going. Open stance dudes tend to stride into the ball—to dive out over the plate, to phrase it in extremes. Guys with closed stances are trying to start in a position that keeps them on the incoming pitch, because they know they're going to open up on it quite a bit when they get moving.

Michael Busch has an essentially neutral stance; he's not giving anything away. For much of this season, though, he's been very slightly closed. It was a conscious adjustment he made early in the year, to avoid pulling off the ball and finding the end of his bat. It didn't work, though. Busch doesn't naturally open up very much on the ball. Being even a tiny bit closed has just cut him off. For most of the season, his best contact has gone to center field, where it more often gets caught than clears the fence. Worse, to generate power, he's mostly needed to wait for pitchers to make mistakes on the inner half—to force him to turn on the ball properly, as it were. This is why, entering Wednesday, Busch is still very much in danger of finishing the season with a sub-.400 slugging average, despite 20 home runs and what will probably be 50-plus extra-base hits. Only 11 players in baseball history have cleared those counting-stat thresholds with such a measy overall slugging average. (Joe Carter did it twice.)

Maybe he's poised to escape that infamy, though. Since the off day between the Cubs' Labor Day weekday series against the Brewers and their game at home on September 11, Busch is batting .303/.455/.515, with two home runs and a double. The secret: a small but important change to his stance and stride, which has resulted in his best swings taking the ball to his pull field in the air again.

Here's a 2-0 fastball he got from the Blue Jays' Dylan Cease in early August. It was on the outer half, but very hittable. Busch wasted it.

Now, here's a similar pitch (in a 2-1 count) Busch did not waste, from just after he made his suite of small changes.

To highlight the differences between his stances, strides and swings on these two pitches, let's look at a few key frames. Here are four moments in the delivery from Cease: the last frame before Busch picks up his front foot; the moment Cease releases the ball; the moment Busch's front foot re-engages the ground; and the point of contact.

Compare and contrast that with the same four moments in the pitch on which he homered.

It's almost imperceptible, but look closely. Busch's back leg is a bit more bent in his setup now. He's slightly more open. That lets him see the ball better early and maintain batter balance during his stride, which gets him through the ball more fluidly. This swing looks a lot like Busch did for much of last season; he'd just lost the feel for it.

Minuscule changes like this are easy to overlook, but for a player who was never missing being great by very much, they've made a big difference. Busch is red-hot right now, just when the Cubs most need him. He's clicking, much as he was when he hit a clutch home run in last year's Wild Card Series and helped the team advance beyond that round.

A shift in results this big from a change so small is unavoidably fragile. Busch might not stay this locked-in for long. As you can see, he's had plenty of ups and downs already in 2026. He seems to have made an adjustment I would have prescribed for him months ago, though, which is encouraging. There's at least some chance that Busch is back in the groove that eluded him for much of this year, and that he'll be the caliber of hitter the Cubs have needed him to be all season, right when they need him most.