Alex Bregman's Jekyll-and-Hyde Season Hasn't Actually Been That Confusing

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Early season struggles are not necessarily new to Alex Bregman. Throughout his career, the season has generally played out in varying levels of fine in the early-going before the production catches fire in July & August. In his first season with the Chicago Cubs, though, things certainly reached a point where we were all left wondering if that typical summer ascent was actually going to manifest.

While Bregman's numbers were otherwise respectable throughout those first three months of the year, he also wasn't providing much in terms of impact. A .243/.343/.347 line kept him close to respectability (97 wRC+), but he also maintained an ISO of only .103 across more than 380 plate appearances. We heard plenty about adjustments being made, but the absence of notable contributions for a player consistently hitting in the two, three, or four holes in the lineup became a glaring shortcoming for the team.

That was particularly true after June. In that month, Bregman slashed just .200/.348/.300 with a 16.5 percent walk rate serving as effectively the one thing keeping him afloat production-wise. Batted ball luck didn't help either, with Bregman going for a BABIP of just .211.

Something happened when the calendar flipped over to July, though.

Bregman has caught fire in a way that very few players throughout the league could match. In roughly 300 plate appearances since July 1, he's at a .291/.368/.598 line with 19 homers, a gaudy .307 ISO, and a 163 wRC+. He's been one of the best hitters the sport has to offer over that stretch, to the point where the whole season numbers land him in fifth among National League position players in fWAR (5.2).

What's even wilder about the turnaround is that there haven't been a whole host of mechanical changes to indicate such a torrid pace since July, which one might typically expect when hearing a term like "adjustments."

Instead, the mechanics have remained steady. Bregman's bat speed and tilt are each identical between his plate appearances into the end of June and the ones that have come since the start of July. His attack angle and attack direction have each shifted by about two degrees, with the swing getting flatter (15 degrees through June 30 vs. 13 degrees since) and favoring a direction closer to center (six degrees through June 30th and four degrees since). It's not a tremendous difference, but one that speaks to his biggest shift (to which we'll get in a moment) on some level. Further, he's moved within the box but only slightly, with each of his depth and distance from the plate increasing by barely more than an inch.

None of these numbers are particularly notable in the grand scheme of things. Had the player been performing at a consistent level throughout the season, we may not have even noticed them at all. Instead, Bregman's shift since his inflection point at the June-July point in the calendar looks to be the result of timing more than anything else.

This is Bregman's swing timing against the three main pitch groups through June 30th:

Bregman was largely in the proper windows against fastballs, but struggles began to present themselves against the other two types. Notably, he was early on off-speed and breaking pitches while some of the contact against breaking pitches specifically spilled toward the end of the bat more frequently than one might like. Which is why it's no surprise that his ability to make quality contact was stifled quite a bit; in April & June, his hard-hit rate against breaking pitches checked in at only 25.9 percent. You're not going to find any level of batted ball luck that way.

Here, however, is Bregman since July 1:

The vertical component of his timing was never really in question against any pitch group. What Bregman has managed to do, though, is rein in the horizontal point of contact and generate swings that are more on time in terms of his bat's placement within the zone upon contact. The two subsequent months saw him increase his rate of hard contact against breaking pitches.

In general, though, this is just a professional hitter doing professional hitter things. At no point this year has Bregman gotten out of his approach or overhauled his mechanics to look for a solution that didn't necessarily need to be found. The approach remained intact and continues to get even better, considering he's walking nearly twice as often this month (11.5 percent) as he's striking out (6.6 percent). This was almost all a matter of timing. It's not purely that—consider the slight change in his bat path—but it's allowed those changes that would otherwise be marginal or entirely unnoticed to actually have some level of impact.

The reality is that we were always going to see this form from Alex Bregman eventually. Maybe not to this extent on the power side of things, but while we may have this perception of two different version of Bregman in 2026, he remains very much the same player he's always been.