Michael Busch's Start to 2025 Has Been the Same, But Different

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Michael Busch comes out of the gate hot. He slugs .500 in March and April, providing consistent power in a potent Chicago Cubs offense. The calendar flips over to May, the power disappears, the strikeout rate rises, and we're pondering whether what we saw in the season's first month was even real. 

While such a scenario may speak more to what we saw in 2024, it's hard to ignore the parallels between Busch's rookie campaign last season and what we've seen thus far in 2025. It's an imperfect comparison. Maybe even a dramatic one. But it's hard to ignore some of the similarities between his output in the early going of each campaign.

The 2024 March/April iteration of Michael Busch looked like a long-term solution at first base. He hit .266, reached base at a .333 clip, and posted an isolated power figure of .234. His wRC+ checked in at 130. He also struck out at a rate north of 30 percent (more on that in a moment). When May rolled around, he looked like hardly the same hitter. The average fell to just .208 (even with a .342 BABIP). The ISO dropped nearly 70 points to .167. His wRC+ barely scratched above the "average" threshold, at 104. His K% managed to sit five points higher, at 37.2 percent. 

Busch would, of course, go on to stabilize in certain respects. Even if the power wavered throughout the year, he was able to cut the strikeout rate in each month as the season progressed, while improving his quality of contact. There was a maturity there that assured him of the first base position ahead of 2025. 

That position remains stable, but the same April-to-May trend remains present. 

In March and April of this year, Busch went for a .276 average. He ISO'd .245 and posted a 152 wRC+. The strikeout rate remained high, in a relative sense, but came down massively from last year's start (24.8 percent). But since the calendar read "May 1," we're witnessing a lot of the same things. Busch is hitting just .221 this month. His ISO has cratered in comparison with the opening month, at .147. His wRC+, as of this writing, is at 103.

The biggest change is in the strikeout rate. It's still up from last month, but not what it was in 2024 (25.3 percent). Like last year, he's managed to increase the walk rate in the midst of struggles elsewhere. Busch has stabilized his game in comparison to last year, but the power dip in consecutive years is a rather jarring feature of his game.

Especially because, at first blush, there isn't much in the way of indicators. He's experiencing a higher quality of contact (around 37 percent Hard%), has largely cut or remained steady in his whiff rates, and has virtually an identical groundball rate in May (37.5) that he did in March & April (35.5). Contact is quite similar, too. It actually defies logic. Busch has a higher average exit velocity in May. A steeper launch angle. A higher xSLG. He's finding the barrel with more frequency, too. Even with a slight increase on the chase-and-miss front, there is nothing that indicates Busch should be struggling to find power to this extent, let alone feature an ISO of just .107 in the last two weeks. 

So what gives? 

It might be as simple as where in the zone Busch is putting his bat. The following is Busch's zone profile in March & April: 

Nothing surprising here, especially given the power output. Swings in the upper two-thirds of the zone, as well as on the inner portion of the plate. When you look at Busch's swing against the above visual, it makes sense. 

And then you get to May: 

Some similar trends exist through the middle of the zone vertically. But there's more emphasis on the lower portions of the zone on the horizontal side. It may not be intentional, but you're talking about a guy with 19th percentile bat speed. As good as everything else looks, generating enough lift to create impact from where in the zone Busch is swinging more frequently this month is going to be a difficult task. For Busch, it looks like one he can't overcome at present. 

Michael Busch is very much the hitter we expected from a growth standpoint. The strikeouts are down, the contact is up, and the approach has remained steady even through a big ol' power dip. 

It appears he just needs to work on those pitches in the upper portion of the zone in order to get it back.