Three Cubs Who Are Primed for a Second-Half Breakout

The Chicago Cubs sit 12 games above .500 coming out of the All-Star Break, and all things considered, that's pretty impressive.

The pitching staff has been absolutely decimated by injuries—you could almost put together an entire pitching staff just from the names currently on the injured list. Despite that, Chicago has managed to stay firmly entrenched in the playoff picture. A lot of that has been thanks to an offense that's been one of the best in baseball, along with several pitchers stepping up when the team has needed them most.

And yet, there are still a few key players who haven't quite looked like themselves this season. If the Cubs are going to make a legitimate run in October, they're going to need those players to turn things around over the second half. So with that, here are three Cubs that I believe are in line for big second halves.

Nico Hoerner

The first name on the list is Nico Hoerner. Hoerner got off to an extremely strong start to the season. Over the first month, he was hitting .307 with an .855 OPS and a 137 wRC+, looking every bit like one of the most complete middle infielders in baseball. Unfortunately for the Cubs, that success didn't last.

Fast-forward to the All-Star break, and Hoerner is hitting just .233 with a .631 OPS and a 79 wRC+, making him comfortably below league average offensively. Even with those struggles, though, there are plenty of reasons to believe a turnaround is coming. For starters, the underlying metrics paint a much more optimistic picture than the traditional numbers do. Hoerner owns a .284 expected batting average, which is dramatically higher than his actual mark, and his expected slugging percentage also sits comfortably above his current production.

That suggests he's been one of the more unlucky hitters in baseball this season, and beyond the expected numbers, he's still Nico Hoerner. His bat-to-ball skills remain among the very best in the sport. He ranks in the 98th percentile in whiff rate and the 100th percentile in strikeout rate, meaning almost nobody puts the bat on the ball more consistently than he does. Pair that with his exceptional defense at second base, and it's easy to see why the Cubs handed him a lucrative extension earlier this year.

The underlying data would indicate that Hoerner has simply gotten extremely unlucky at the plate, and eventually, that kind of bad fortune tends to even itself out. I fully expect a big second half from the Cubs' second baseman.

Matthew Boyd

The next player who needs to step up is Matthew Boyd. And to be fair, Boyd deserves a little bit of leeway. Despite carrying a 4.50 ERA into the second half, his season took a bizarre turn back in early May when he tore his meniscus after sitting down to play with his kids. He was just trying to be a good dad—such a cruel world. Even outside of the injury, though, 2026 has been a frustrating season for Boyd. The encouraging part is that his actual stuff still looks really good.

His whiff rate and chase rate both rank in at least the 78th percentile among major-league pitchers, showing that hitters are still having plenty of trouble squaring him up when they swing. He's also continued doing what he's always done well, which is throwing strikes and attacking the zone. The biggest issue has simply been the quality of contact when hitters do connect.

His hard-hit rate ranks all the way down in the fourth percentile, while his barrel rate and average exit velocity aren't much better. That's obviously not ideal. At the same time, Boyd's 3.58 FIP suggests he's been considerably better than his ERA would indicate and that he has suffered from some poor luck on balls in play. He's also looked much sharper since returning from the injured list. Across four starts after coming back, Boyd has allowed just seven earned runs over 22 innings, giving the Cubs exactly the kind of stability they've desperately needed in an injury-riddled rotation.

Health permitting, Matthew Boyd feels like someone who's in line for a nice second half. And with how banged up the Cubs' starting rotation has been all year, they'll absolutely need it.

Alex Bregman

The third and final player I'll mention is, of course, Alex Bregman. After signing a massive five-year, $175 million contract this offseason, it hasn't exactly been the start in Chicago that Bregman envisioned. He's hitting just .241 with a sub-.700 OPS, and unlike Hoerner, the underlying metrics don't really suggest he's been the victim of bad luck. Both his expected batting average and expected slugging percentage are actually three points lower than his current numbers, while several of his quality-of-contact metrics rank among the worst of his career. So, this prediction is definitely more speculation than it is data-driven.

But sometimes history matters. Throughout his career, Bregman has consistently been a much better hitter during the second half of the season. His career second-half slash line sits at .284/.372/.508, which is comfortably better than his .260/.356/.446 line before the All-Star Break. For whatever reason, Bregman always seems to hit the ball harder, reach base more often, and perform at a higher level once the calendar creeps closer to October.

Maybe 2026 ends up being the exception. Maybe this is simply the beginning of a long-term decline. But I'm not quite ready to believe that yet. Instead, I'm betting on another classic Bregman second-half surge over the final two-and-a-half months of the regular season. If that happens, it'll give the Cubs another dangerous bat in an already-loaded lineup and make them an even tougher team to deal with once October arrives.