Almost Without Highlights, Alex Bregman Has Been an Excellent Defensive Third Baseman

According to Statcast, there have been 212 ground balls hit either to third base or into left field with Alex Bregman on the field this season. On those grounders, on a rate basis, Bregman has been better at getting outs (and, in various ways, preventing extra bases) than all but five other third baseman who have had meaningful playing time. The only person who's been as busy at the hot corner and as efficient as Bregman, this year, is Matt Chapman. Bregman's 9 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) are already a career high.

That's probably somewhat surprising, even if you've watched a lot of Cubs games this season. Bregman is suffering from a reverse-halo effect this year, because he's not hitting the way the team hoped he would when they made a major five-year investment in him over the winter. He also doesn't make many plays that catch your eye—just as the walks he draws and the singles he hits don't catch your eye, at bat. But in fact, Bregman has been a steady and positive player for the Cubs, thanks to his .340 on-base percentage and (especially) his elite partnership with Dansby Swanson on the left side of the infield.

Let's take a look at a couple of plays that elucidate Bregman's brilliance with the glove. We can start with one that bends toward the obvious.

When you think of a good play by a third baseman, that's the kind of play that comes to mind. The ball was sharply hit and took Bregman toward the line, forcing him to slide to field it cleanly. It also required a long throw across the diamond. If there were 10 plays like this on his highlight reel, you wouldn't be taken aback to learn that he's been the third-best third baseman in the league this year. There aren't, though. 

Instead, most of the plays Bregman has made look a lot like this.

That ball, too, was hit sharply, but the play was pretty routine, and it looked like it. In fact, Bregman even did something he's done a ton this year, which used to drive Cubs fans nuts when it was being done by both Nick Madrigal and Matt Shaw: take several steps after fielding the ball to gain ground toward his target before throwing. There are plenty of plays this year on which Bregman has fielded the ball, run five full (though short and quick) steps, then thrown across the diamond after a crow hop. Paradoxically, he's in the habit of giving ground on balls other third baseman would try to field on the charge (or at least with their left shoulder forward, getting their body moving toward the target), but he still finds time on those plays to use a few steps to build momentum before firing.

I think, though, that a subtle genius underlies Bregman's unorthodox playmaking at third base. The more you watch him, the more he feels just like Swanson, if Swanson were a third baseman instead. For one thing, Bregman is very good at trusting his balance. He stays down on the ball extremely well, but not in a way that leaves him crouched too low to move fluidly out of his fielding position. As the ball gets near him, you'll often see him slightly straighten his legs, but his chest (and, therefore, his glove) stays down. He only has two fielding errors this year, and two throwing errors. Since April 23, he only has one error, period. He's sensationally sure-handed, at a position where bad hops are more common than for any other infielder.

As is true of Swanson, Bregman has a below-average arm, in terms of raw throwing power. Like Swanson, though, Bregman has above-average arm utility, because he's accurate and always seems to know how much time he has to make a throw. His internal clock is excellent, and his confidence as a playmaker allows him to succeed on what we might call broken plays, in football parlance.

This play looks like a could-be routine grounder made dangerous by Bregman himself, but in fact, it was one of those times when everything seems to work against you—but Bregman got an out anyway. With Willy Adames at bat, the Cubs infield was heavily shaded toward the left side. That made getting to the ball relatively easy for Bregman, but once he got there, he had a problem. Michael Busch had been pulled far off the line, and he wasn't getting to the base fast enough to set up in the usual way.

Because the ball was hit slowly and on a lazy couple of bounces, Bregman didn't have much time to spare. If he had a stronger arm, he could have held it an extra half-beat, allowed Busch to get set in the standard way, and fired a seed across the diamond, but because he doesn't have that juice, he needed to throw on the run. Doing that while also trying to hit a target that's more air than flesh—throwing to a spot and trusting Busch to make the play, even though he wasn't yet awaiting the ball—is deceptively difficult. That's a play on which many players make an errant throw. Bregman, however, put it right on the bag. Busch, his feet not quite right and not touching the base, had to slap an emergency tag on Adames as the Giants shortstop went by, but he managed it. That's a disaster averted, but also a could-be hit nullified, thanks to Bregman's superb rhythm when he gets to the ball.

Bregman has also been excellent at starting the double play; only Chapman has been involved in more from third base this year. Sometimes, that's accomplished simply by means of a quick glove-to-hand exchange and fast release on a throw, to spark the old-fashioned around-the-horn twin killing. But Bregman also does well (unsurprisngly) when running to touch his own base before making the long throw across to Busch—and not infrequently, he starts double plays like a shortstop, because that's where he's playing.

Swanson came to the Cubs the same year that the league outlawed the infield shift. In the years since, the team has mostly lagged the league in the frequency with which they deploy even the still-legal shading against left-handed batters, whereby the third baseman is pulled far off the line to play something more like shortstop, while the shortstop plays near the bag and the second baseman guards the hole between themselves and the first baseman. Here are the percentages of plate appearances by lefty batters on which they've shaded (and their rank in the league in that category) for each year of Swanson's tenure:

• 2023: 31.4 (25th)
• 2024: 37.8 (24th)
• 2025: 53.4 (14th)
• 2026: 66.9 (3rd)

Whether to shade your infield against a lefty is as much a question of philosophy and personnel as of expected batted-ball location. It's a question of whom you trust most, and whom you trust more in specific circumstances. For the most part, since bringing in Swanson, the Cubs have trusted him with the ball more than the third baseman, even if there was a decent chance he would be making a given play going to his right. They've wanted him to cover as much space as possible even against lefty batters.

No more. Bregman is getting a lot of time at a position that's closer to shortstop than to third base, when lefties are up against Cubs pitchers. He's always done this, but it wasn't a guarantee that he would continue to do so once he took up residence next to Swanson. He has. That's the other way in which he's been immensely valuable in the field. While the occasional slapped grounder might now get through an open left side of the infield, the Cubs are better for having Bregman and Swanson working in tandem. The lighter workload in the field should also help Swanson manage the grind of the season better.

Cubs fans will feel frustrated unless and until Bregman clicks at the plate and rediscovers his power. His current slugging average (.345) more than .100 off even his recent averages, and he's a .471 career slugger. The team needs him to produce closer to that level, or their offense will continue to feel power-starved at times. Even in the meantime, though, Bregman has been an above-average player, thanks both to the way he keeps the line moving on offense and to the sneaky excellence of his work in the field.