Should Cubs Youngsters Matt Shaw and Pedro Ramirez Play Every Day for a While?

In the long run, the Cubs need Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner to hit. They can't trade either player. They can't cut either player. They certainly can't permanently bench either player, having invested roughly $50 million a year in them for each of the next four seasons. Nor can they afford for Moisés Ballesteros not to pan out at the plate, after they effectively chose him over Owen Caissie when they traded the latter to Miami this winter. Swanson, Hoerner and Ballesteros are indispensable pieces of the team's present and future.

That's one reality. Another, grimmer one is that:

• Swanson is batting .145/.228/.206 since the start of May;
• Hoerner is batting .190/.269/.231 since April 21, the day on which he hit his last home run; and
• Ballesteros is batting .128/.217/.170 in 106 plate appearances since the final days of April.

Swanson is being eaten alive by a league force-feeding him breaking balls. Hoerner keeps hitting the ball squarely, in theory, but unproductively in practice. Ballesteros got squeezed a bit positionally amid the red-hot start of Michael Conforto, and has run into some major problems related to his bat path as the league has made their adjustments to him. The three have combined for over 450 plate appearances in these spans, and they're the most hideous black holes imaginable on the lineup card. 

The Cubs continue to try to develop Ballesteros into a catcher even while easing him into full-time duty as a hitter in the majors, which has probably contributed to his poor showing on offense. Unfortunately, because he's still not an adequate receiver at this point in his career, that makes him a net negative on both sides of the runs ledger. Swanson and Hoerner still have great defensive and positional value, but the team can't afford to keep running them both out everyday unless and until at least one of them gets right.

That brings the conversation around to two players who have found their way into more games (and even the starting lineup, now and then) lately, and whom the Cubs also need to be developing, anyway: Matt Shaw, and Pedro Ramírez. Shaw has manned right field in three of the team's last four games, as Seiya Suzuki deals with a balky right knee. Ramírez has rotated in at both second and third base, with Alex Bregman getting some half-days-off as the designated hitter and Hoerner and Swanson getting turns on the bench to reset.

As the Cubs' season spirals out of control, Shaw and Ramírez have been rare bright spots. Shaw has four hits, a walk and a base via being hit by a pitch since coming off the injured list earlier this month, in just 12 plate appearances. Ramírez has only made eight starts among the 15 games in which he's appeared and has only 38 plate appearances, but he's hitting a respectable .257/.316/.400. Shaw has come along faster than expected as a right fielder, although the back strain that shelved him for a few weeks will bear monitoring. Ramírez has been relentlessly impressive in the field and at the plate, never awing you with his tools but making the right play consistently and well.

For the balance of June, the Cubs should be playing Shaw and Ramírez as much as anyone on the team, save Pete Crow-Armstrong and Ian Happ. Ramírez's combination of versatility and reliability means that Swanson, Hoerner and Bregman can be taken off the diamond on any given day without the team missing a beat defensively. He's also shown above-average bat speed and a good feel for contact, though he'll have to make a round of adjustments himself as the league learns not to throw him changeups. Shaw is consistenly under four-seam fastballs, but because Swanson is drawing a lot of sinkerballers who are throwing their heaters right under his bat, that creates a natural timeshare. Shaw can take plate appearances for which Swanson is ill-suited for a while, so the veteran can continue working on the needed tweaks. He can play second base, sliding Hoerner over to shortstop. He also offers the only real backup to Crow-Armstrong, Happ and Suzuki, now that Conforto is showing his decrepitude again.

It wouldn't be fair to expect Shaw and Ramírez to be above-average players for the rest of this season. They're better off in smaller roles; neither profiles as a future star. But they're exactly the kind of sparky young players a team often needs when they struggle, and the Cubs should embrace the fact that they have them. Awkward though it might be at first, Swanson, Hoerner, Bregman and Ballesteros need to be told that their playing time will be curtailed while they work behind the scenes to get right; they've each had more than enough chances to work their way out of their current funks via everyday game reps. Shaw and Ramírez won't save Chicago's season, but for the highly-paid stars to do so, the youngsters will have to keep them afloat for a while first.