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Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images The Chicago Cubs are not a particularly good baseball team at present. Their offense has been a specific source of struggle, with the team being shut out twice and failing to score more than two runs another four times over their last 10 games. As the collective struggles mightily, though, Michael Busch is beginning to emerge from a first-month swoon. March & April weren't particularly kind to the first baseman. Busch's 2025 represented a breakout; he reined in his approach, cut down on the strikeouts, and slugged 34 home runs on his way to establishing himself among the more valuable players the position had to offer. His first month of 2026, however, failed to demonstrate the same growth. He slogged his way to a .193/.295/.281 line with a 71 wRC+. His isolated power checked in at a mere .088. Even if we were to attribute some of that to a woeful .241 batting average on balls in play, there was enough chase (28.6 percent) and enough of a struggle to generate hard contact (a 32.9 percent rate that was 15 points below 2025) for valid concern. Even as his counterparts throughout the lineup have fallen off at the plate here in May, though, Busch has gotten himself back on track. It's not merely that the production is there, either. It's loud production backed by some really impressive underlying elements. Through his first 80-ish plate appearances of the month, Busch's line reads .317/.468/.567 with a 190 wRC+. He has an even split between his strikeout and walk rate, with a 21.5 percent number in each. Only five qualifying hitters have posted a better wRC+ and only three have walked at a higher clip than he has. The .405 BABIP helps to indicate a leveling out of his fortunes, but there are so many positive things happening beyond the luck component. Between the two months, Busch has managed to nearly double his rate of hard contact: He's managed to increase the Hard-Hit% against each of the three pitch types, but it's especially been true against breaking pitches and fastballs; his hard-hit rate has leapt from 40 to 75 percent against the former and from 32.8 percent to 62.2 against the latter. While that's happening, his groundball rate has plummeted. Busch is putting balls on the ground just 31.8 percent of the time in May against 48.2 percent in March & April. That's resulted in a six percent uptick in line drives and a 13 percent jump in fly balls. That means that the all-important PullAIR% has risen steadily, with Busch now at 17.3 percent for the year. It appears that this really comes down to settling back into his approach. Throughout his two years on the North Side, we've watched Busch graduate from more of a free swinger prone to swings and misses to a much more calculated presence at the plate. Between the first two months of the year, he's cut his chase rate by about eight percent (20.9 percent thus far in May). It's not that the contact rate has changed; that's actually remained relatively constant regardless of where the calendar falls. It's that he's been able to do more with the contact he's making. Nothing that Michael Busch is doing at the plate should be a surprise. We knew from his initial acquisition from the Los Angeles Dodgers that there was impact in the bat, it was just a matter of if the approach would allow it to be realized. We've seen the development of it over the last two years, and while it disappeared for a bit in the season's opening month, he's managed to settle right back into where he should be. Hopefully, the rest of the Cubs' lineup will follow his lead in short order. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Throughout his career, whether with the Chicago Cubs or in Atlanta, the key to Dansby Swanson's success at the plate has become increasingly evident. Regardless of whatever month-to-month variance he may be experiencing, he's a player who needs to lean on the fastball in order to drive his production. His time on the North Side has illustrated both sides of what that can look like. Last season, in particular, Swanson demonstrated the benefits of being fastball-focused. His .173 isolated power was his highest since 2021, with a hard-hit rate of 47.7%—the highest rate of his career up to that point, and a well-above-average mark. He hit 55.2% of his balls in play against fastballs hard and slugged .579 against them. That came in a season where he chased 27.1% of fastballs outside the zone, indicating that he was hunting them even at the expense of plate discipline (a trend he'd mostly managed to temper over the three previous seasons). That aggressiveness helped Swanson in the power production department, but nowhere else. He ended the 2025 season swinging more than ever (50.2%) and making contact at a rate lower than either of his two previous seasons with the Cubs (73.1%). Fastball hunting wasn't the sole reason for the higher-power, lower-contact results, but it was certainly part of the equation. Alarmingly, we're starting to see some of those trends manifest again. It's not that Swanson was off to the hottest of starts in March and April, but there was some improvement there. He slashed .214/.344/.439 in the opening month, with a 122 wRC+. That latter figure was driven by a strong power output (.244 ISO) and an underlying 47.9% hard-hit rate. There was some improvement on the discipline front from last season, with a 39.8% overall swing rate and 21.5% chase rate, the latter of which included just 22.9% against fastballs. That helped him generate a walk rate over 16% through the end of April. We were comparing him to some of the game's most notorious three-true-outcomes dudes. When the calendar flipped, though, Swanson began to run into some trouble. In fact, he's derailed. He's currently sitting at .158/.213/.246 for the month of May, with a wRC+ of just 30. His strikeout rate has fallen to a shade over 16%, but his walk rate has fallen by nearly 10 percentage points, too, to 6.5%. His ISO has cratered, at just .088. Some of that is bad luck; Swanson has a batting average on balls in play of just .174 this month. To an extent, though, you can work your way out of that via a quality approach. Whatever approach was working for Swanson in the first month, however, has gone the way of the rest of his output. Here is Swanson's overall swing rate between the two stretches of play: The overall swing rate has climbed, and not by a little. More worrisome, though, is the chase rate: The chase rate itself moving up 10 percentage points speaks to exactly the type of issues we've seen from Swanson during his periods of poor performance. Given what we know about Swanson and fastballs, that makes the following perhaps the most notable in all of this: It's one thing for Swanson to become more aggressive in trying to create offense. We've also seen the perils of attacking fastballs without any regard for the strike zone. His chase rate against fastballs has jumped by more than 20 percentage points, while his hard-hit rate against them has fallen by nearly that same number. Toss in the fact that his groundball rate, wrought by his increasing disregard for the zone in favor of the pitch type, has ballooned by 11 percentage points, and it's no wonder we're watching a player without much to offer at the plate right now. That it's a familiar issue doesn't make it a less frustrating one. The Cubs offense, as a collective, has largely sputtered of late without consistent power from Swanson on which to fall back. History tells us he'll work his way out of it by the time June runs around, but more recent history also makes us somewhat wary of the approach on fastballs that appears to be, for the second consecutive season, slipping from his control. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images Ian Happ is off to a strange start in 2026. There's more power than we've come to expect, and even more strikeouts. In fact, there's something about this iteration of Happ that looks similar to one we might have seen in 2017 or 2018. Whether or not that's a good thing for the Chicago Cubs, however, is certainly up for debate. When Happ was a rookie in 2017, he struck out more than 30 percent of the time, with a walk rate that just barely scratched above 9%. He followed that up with an even higher strikeout figure (36.1%) in 2018. The difference was that he was able to drive up the walk rate to what, up until this season, had served as a career-high (15.2%). There was also one other notable element that fluctuated between the two seasons: the power. In his rookie year, Happ hit 24 home runs. He's since exceeded that number twice, with 25-homer campaigns in 2021 and 2024. But permeating throughout all of those strikeouts, all of those walks, and all of those home runs in 2017 was regular impact contact. He posted a .261 isolated power that he's never come close to replicating over a full season. The next season, his ISO fell to .176. He was able to reach .209 in 2021, but has otherwise sat between a .169 and .199 ISO in the years following that rookie outburst. More recent years have seen Happ settle into a base where his patience is the pillar. He's exceeded the 20-homer threshold a handful of times, but that ISO has never climbed back to the second-year heights he reached. Instead, he's relied on his discipline. From 2021 to 2025, Happ's 45.3% swing rate ranked 102nd out of 360 qualifying position players. His 27.0% chase rate sat 67th. Each of those elements contributed to a walk rate that came in 23rd out of that whole group (12.1%). He was a remarkably consistent, if unspectacular, player over that stretch. Happ's line in those five seasons read .247/.343/.433, for a 117 wRC+. His strikeout rate came in at 24.4%, alongside that notable walk rate. His ISO read .187. It's an output that seems wholly appropriate for a player who has been steady more than he's been a star. However, something different is happening in 2026. His early 2026 line reads .228/.368/.455. In general, that wouldn't seem to represent a stark departure for what we've come to expect from him. However, a number of other areas on the stat sheet have spiked. His walk rate has climbed to over 17%, with a .228 ISO. The former would be the best rate of his career; the latter checks in as the best outside of that 2018 season. His wRC+, at 134, would also sit atop his career outputs. So we have a player who has lingered on the edge of being a "three-true-outcomes" guy diving even further into those waters. It's not obvious how Happ's doing it. Sometimes, you see a player trying to tap into more power by selling out for it. That might mean an increased swing rate or a harder swing. Happ is doing neither. His 40.9% swing rate is actually the lowest of his career, by a decent margin. His bat speed hasn't changed in any discernible fashion from either side, coming in slightly slower as a left-handed swinger and slightly faster as a righty. Neither has changed in a way that would speak to such a drastic jump in power. What Happ is doing is taking more chances. His overall swing rate has dropped by about three percentage points from last year, but the chase rate has also risen by about that much. He's making less contact overall, by a significant margin, but he's also making more impactful contact. Happ's barrel rate (17.5% of his balls in play) is not only in the 95th percentile, but sits well above any previous rate he's posted. There isn't any major mechanical shift happening here. It's in Happ making active choices to seek damage. That type of philosophical shift does have to show up in your body at some point. Rather than being in the swing itself, though, it appears to be in his setup, from the right side. From the left side, he's always had power. His career ISO against right-handed pitchers is .217. It's a bit exaggerated this year, but only a bit. The big difference has come as a righty, where he made over his game and became much more of a contact-oriented, ground-ball guy in 2023 and 2024, but started to find his power again in 2025. This year, he already has three homers from the right side, and his ISO is .212, against a career mark of .154. To get to that pop, he's opened his stance over the last two seasons. Here, from left to right, are pitches Happ saw against lefties in 2024, 2025, and last month. Why does this matter? After all, as hitting coaches love to remark, great hitters all get to fairly similar points by the time they make contact. Here's why: All swings have a certain natural directionality and timing. Barring a full-fledged swing overhaul, hitters will generally find their best contact in the same range and (therefore) with their bat in the same positions and on the same trajectories. One way to tweak that is the stance. We don't yet have Statcast visualizations of Happ's swing for 2026, because switch-hitting keeps his sample smaller than for batters who only hit from one side. But here, side-by-side, are the moments when his barrel first enters the back of the hitting zone by crossing the back tip of home plate, for 2024 and 2025. In 2024, his stance was 8° closed from the right side. Last season, it was neutral (0°). Look at the difference that made in where his bat is in its (otherwise little-changed) path when he gets to that same early juncture in the swing. Notice, too, that his front hip is a bit more open in the image on the right, without his hands being materially farther in front of his body or his front shoulder leaking out. He slightly reoriented a swing with which he'd begun to find success (but only on the ground), and unlocked something more. This year, a further tweak in the same direction has exaggerated that—with some costs, as the strategy approaches an extreme, but also with big benefits. Happ's attack angle (the upward angle of the barrel at the instant of contact) was 5° in 2024; it's now 10°. His attack direction (the horizontal angle of the barrel at that same moment) was 3° toward his pull side two years ago; it's now 7°. Happ has a good command of the strike zone. One could make the argument that he's spent the last handful of years being too patient. This year, he's deploying that patience toward attempting to create power for himself, especially from the right side. It hasn't come at the expense of his ability to draw a walk, just in his ability to make contact as consistently. Are the Cubs better for it, though? There's an argument to be made that they are. Under Craig Counsell, the Cubs have been a team that operates with efficiency at the plate. They're approach-oriented, with slower swings that generate quality contact via the barrel more than aggressive ones that maximize power potential. The issue with that ideology is that it doesn't always beget consistent offense. The walks are always there, but the actual output occasionally suffers as players enter periods of bad timing, bad luck, or a temporary deviation from their typical approach. Happ, in his current form, appears to be a benefit for the Cubs, in that he's still generating the on-base presence via the walk but is also creating more in a way that we don't always see from him—or anyone in the lineup. If the Cubs were a bad team in the OBP department, perhaps one could argue that Happ needs to retreat back into his typical modus operandi. Given their collective ability to do that, though, there's a real case that Happ taking more chances is something that can benefit the Cubs. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-Imagn Images It's difficult to overstate the value that Michael Conforto has brought to the Chicago Cubs early in 2026. A minor-league signing coming off a brutal season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the original perception of Conforto's role was, at best, as temporary depth while Seiya Suzuki worked his way back to full health. Instead, he's gained an increased role in recent weeks on the heels of a torrid stretch of play. As of the series in Atlanta, Conforto is carrying a slash of .340/.448/.617 with a gaudy 198 wRC+. He's striking out more than the Cubs would probably like (25.9 percent), but he's also walking more than 17 percent of the time. Add it all up, and he has been worth 0.6 fWAR for the Cubs in barely 60 plate appearances. It's all a far cry from where he sat last year with the Dodgers when his line read .199/.305/.333 with a wRC+ of just 83 (-0.6 fWAR) across more than 480 PA. What's particularly important in the case of Conforto is that this isn't a player merely flashing despite questionable peripherals. Sure, he's due for some regression on the merit of his .452 batting average on balls in play by itself, but he's also driving the baseball. His 54.5 percent hard-hit rate exceeds his career average by about 13 percent while his 15.2 Barrel% is nearly five full percent better than his career mark. We know good things happen when hitters pull the ball in the air, and Conforto is deploying those contact metrics to the tune of a 30.3 PullAIR%. In short, it's not blind luck driving the start. He's been legitimately good. In general, this performance seems to be driven by his approach. Conforto's swing rate is down, with a 40.2 percent number that would be the lowest of his career if it holds up over the full season. What's more is that his chase rate has fallen to just 20.5 percent (also the lowest of his career). Perhaps most importantly, as the chase rate has plummeted, the in-zone swing rate has remained steady. He's working with a 64.2 percent swing rate on pitches inside the zone that represents just a two percent decrease from last season. It's not solely about the eye, though. There are also mechanical tweaks at play. Conforto's attack angle is up to 13 degrees in 2026 after falling to 10 degrees last season. It's a steeper swing and one that reads around league average (10 degrees), but when you combine the improved approach with a swing generating fly ball contact, you're able to find the type of early results that Conforto is producing. Of course, it's important to note the managerial component within all of this as well. While a recent scuffling from the Cubs' offense at large has forced Craig Counsell to insert Conforto into the lineup with greater regularity, he's also shielding him entirely from left-handed pitching. Conforto isn't as drastically bad against pitchers of the same handedness as some lefty hitters may be, but he did go for a wRC+ of just 76 against them last year. As such, Counsell has sent Conforto to the plate against a left-handed pitcher just a single time this season. That's certainly something not to be overlooked in matters of his early run. As impressive as Michael Conforto has been, the regression monster is something that's going to continue to loom, especially in the case of a player that hasn't experienced sustained offensive success since, realistically, 2019. In short, that regression is going to come at some point. The batted ball fortune alone is indicative of that inevitability. However, the trends which Conforto has demonstrated to date do offer some encouragement that he can continue to be a regular contributor to the offensive output. When you put a player in a position to succeed, as Counsell has, while said player demonstrates a command of the strike zone and uses that command toward making meaningful contact with the baseball, it's going to yield positive results. Given those two factors, it isn't a surprise that Conforto has good; it's merely a pleasant turn of events that he's been such an uplifting force in the lineup. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Whenever a team is operating within a torrid stretch of play, it becomes worth wondering how the drivers of a team's offense stand in proximity to such a period. With Pete Crow-Armstrong and the Chicago Cubs' own recent run, that relationship became fairly obvious on Wednesday night. With the Cubs needing a minor miracle to rattle off yet another win at Wrigley Field (and in the late-April-early-May period of the season), Crow-Armstrong deposited a 0-0 pitch from his shoe tops to the netting in left-center field to level the score and allow the Cubs to win in 10 innings. That it would only have been a homer at the Friendly Confines is hardly consequential to the overall point we're making. Had this stretch of play for the Cubs occurred early in the season, the juxtaposition with Crow-Armstrong's output would have looked very different. Through his first 111 plate appearances of the season (through April 25), he featured a slash of just .235/.291/.314 with a wRC+ of 70. He had just a single home run to his name and was rattling off strikeouts at a 30.6 percent clip. Had it not been for Michael Busch's own slow start to the year, his production would have sat at the bottom of the list in terms of output from Cubs regulars. As one might expect, the underlying plate discipline looking rather woeful was a significant contributor. As of that point on the calendar, Crow-Armstrong was swinging at a 57.8 percent rate. That mark was 12 points higher than the next closest player (Busch) on the roster. His 46.7 percent chase rate was nearly 11 points higher than Nico Hoerner's 35.4 Chase%, without the obvious element of bat-to-ball skills that his infield counterpart possesses. He was still able to make hard contact (46.4 percent), but the erratic nature of his approach held his expected batting average down to just .211. Since that particular point in time, though, we've seen a rather notable shift in Crow-Armstrong's approach: While it's not without its own game-to-game volatility, there's a calmer version of Pete Crow-Armstrong manifesting at the plate since April 25. His overall chase rate is down to 37.2 percent in the 41 plate appearances since and has slipped his overall swing rate to under 50 percent (49.7). His contact rate, meanwhile, has graduated from 71.7 percent in that first stretch to 81.6 in the subsequent plate appearances. That latter figure trails only Seiya Suzuki and (more obviously) Hoerner among regulars. It goes without saying, then, that the production has been ascending for Crow-Armstrong in this two-week period. His slash reads .278/.366/.611 with a wRC+ of 170. His strikeout rate has been cut nearly in half (17.1 percent) with a walk rate that has nearly doubled (9.8 percent). Three of his four home runs have come in that 41 PA sample, with an xBA all the way up at .325. It almost feels too obvious that a more disciplined iteration of Crow-Armstrong is directly responsible for the production we've seen over these past couple of weeks. Were there something in his pitch selection or in his mechanics (vis-à-vis bat tracking) that was indicative of his recent run of play, then perhaps there would be room for a different discussion. The reality is, though, that those things are still varying as much on a given night that a trend has yet to be uncovered. Which leads us to the only rational conclusion that we have with as wild a swinger as our subject: he's tamped it down. It's probably unreasonable, however, to think that this is something sustainable. We've seen Crow-Armstrong endure stretches where he calms down some at the plate, increases his production, and then gradually works his way back into the free-swinger that his baseball identity finds impossible to conceal over any sort of prolonged stretch. On the unrealistic chance that this is something real, though, we can at least look upon this period as a transitional moment into a new foundation. Of course, we're going to need a much, much longer sample before we can declare that even a remote possibility. It's important to note that such pessimism surrounding its permanence doesn't take anything away from his play of late. Regardless of how he got there, Crow-Armstrong needed a stretch like this following a rough start to the year. Even if it's eventually going to result in an inevitable regression in his plate approach, getting him back on track performance-wise was paramount to keeping the Cubs atop the NL Central. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images When the Chicago Cubs signed Alex Bregman this winter, much of the narrative centered around his intangibles. Teams that employ Bregman simply win baseball games. While we may never know the extent to which this effect permeates through the clubhouse, it's hard to argue with the results. As the Cubs have ascended in the standings, though, Bregman's name is one we've heard little about. That brings us to the concrete. From a more tangible standpoint, the book on Bregman was that he'd provide value based firstly on his approach. He doesn't walk a ton, but he doesn't strike out, either. He works a keen eye to hit himself on base, more so than to generate a free pass, with modest power in the offing. Through a touch more than 150 plate appearances, that's exactly what the Cubs have seen. Bregman has struck out just 15.4 percent of the time, which is better than every Cub regular not named Nico Hoerner (even if it is just a touch above his career average of 13.5%). He's walked at a steady 11.5% clip, too. The approach element of his game has remained intact, as Bregman's chase rate (18.2%) is elite and each of the whiff (17.5%) and strikeout rates are just a hair less than that. His 4.01 pitches per plate appearance sits comfortably above league average (3.90) and trails only Dansby Swanson's 4.21 P/PA for the top spot in the group. Yet, one (ok, at least this writer) can't help but feel a sense of disappointment surrounding Bregman's performance in the early going. Perhaps that's something to do with the fact that he's still a below-average hitter by wRC+ (97) and has yet to demonstrate any semblance of power (.110 ISO). There's a touch of misfortune reflected in a .273 batting average on balls in play, but it otherwise feels like there's far more impact to be unlocked from the team's marquee signing of the offseason. A bit of extra elevation may be the key. We already know that Wrigley Field is not a friendly environment for a right-handed hitter looking for power. But Bregman isn't looking for power in the traditional sense. He's looking for the gaps. However, it's hard to find the gaps when you're putting the ball on the ground more than 45 percent of the time, as Bregman has through his 156 plate appearances. Some of that is due less to the zone in which Bregman's swinging, and more to the types of pitches at which he's swinging. For the last four seasons, offspeed pitches yielded Bregman's highest ground-ball rates. That number has grown even higher this season, with a GB% of 64.3 against that pitch grouping. He's also swinging at offspeed stuff 45.5 percent of the time. Not only has he gone for an increase in volume of swings against the offspeed offerings, but he's also swinging less against each of the fastball and breaking pitch groups. There may also be a slight zone issue at play. This is Bregman's zone chart in 2026, illustrating Swing%: It's a decent enough distribution around various portions of the zone, but there's certainly a focus on the inner portion of it. Which becomes problematic when you consider where the groundballs are coming from: There's an easy conclusion to be drawn here: a higher volume of swings in a certain zone is going to beget a higher volume of groundballs. But one doesn't have to lead to the other. When you factor in the number of offspeed pitches at which Bregman is swinging versus his history of outcomes against that pitch type (and get to the fact that he's pulling ground balls at a rate that is currently a career high (24.8%)), it starts to feel like there's something in the approach that's pinning him down. Simply put, he's not in a groove and on time, just yet. While Bregman may very well be offering what the Cubs were hoping to get in the broad scheme of things, there's another level to be attained, and they need to see him attain it. Bregman isn't here to drive the offense from strictly a power standpoint, but eventually, they need him to deliver a bit more power. Once he reaches that point, whether by this adjustment or another, the Cubs will get closer to seeing a fully-realized version of Alex Bregman in their lineup. View full article

Image courtesy of © Denis Poroy-Imagn Images Given his lack of a defensive position (and, somehow worse, the times when he does have one), you won't find Moisés Ballesteros near the top of any WAR leaderboard. He doesn't have the two-part value to drive up that number. If you were to flip the order over to wRC+, however, you'd find him pretty quickly. In fact, with a 216 wRC+ in 69 plate appearances, Ballesteros trails only Yordan Alvarez for the major-league lead. As obscene as that figure is, the rest of the stat sheet is no more subtle. His slash goes .387/.435/.710. He's hit five home runs, barreled 13.7% of his batted balls, and hit 56.9% of all his batted balls hard. That latter figure sits in the 97th percentile for the league. Perhaps most encouraging about the start from Ballesteros is that virtually everything he's producing is coming on the strength of exactly what we thought his skill set was. The power has outperformed what might have been expected, given his launch angle throughout his previous pro career, but he's also been aggressive, while managing consistent contact. That's long been the book on Ballesteros: he's not particularly patient, but he's able to adapt his swing to drive the ball and avoid strikeouts. Contact and swing trends each illustrate exactly that. Given how seamlessly the profile has manifested in nearly a full-time role, is it possible that his skill set could help him stave off what seems like inevitable regression? There are already some factors that lay down the groundwork for at least a modest step back in production. His batting average on balls in play sits at an astronomical .442. His 49.4% swing rate and 32.8% chase rate are higher than the league average. Extreme batted-ball fortune from a rookie hitter who's been aggressive at the plate seems like a recipe for a big comedown—especially when that rookie is one of the slowest players in baseball. While those elements may work in conjunction with one another to create regression (as they have, repeatedly, throughout baseball history), it's also entirely possible that the profile and what we've seen in the swing thus far from Ballesteros will keep him ensconced among the top hitters in the league. For one, the contact rate has remained strong. Ballesteros makes contact on nearly 80% of swings. He's also using the zone to evenly distribute his contact all over the field: It's much more difficult to get a read on a hitter when his tendencies are less apparent than most. Ballesteros has pulled the ball and gone up the middle 34% of the time each, with another 32% headed to the opposite field. That'll make the opposition's adjustments more difficult. If he was a dead-pull guy, for example, you could work the outer part of the zone to get some softer contact out of him. Given how adept Ballesteros has been at hitting the ball all over the field, however, that becomes much more difficult if you're an opposing arm. He can do that because his swing has some extraordinary characteristics. Ballesteros's average bat speed this year is 73.8 MPH, up from 72.7 last year. His contact point has moved 5 inches farther in front of his frame, and that intercept point comes with his bat working uphill in the ideal attack angle range 61.4% of the time, a near-elite rate. It's one thing to expect regression. The early combination of BABIP and aggression for a rookie have spelled doom for many of Ballesteros's predecessors. Those two factors could certainly be responsible for at least a mild step back on the stat sheet in the future. At the same time, there's a profile afoot here that could allow him to fend it off in a way that few hitters are equipped to do. A contact-oriented yet adaptable swing has allowed him to absolutely thrive to this point. That blend should continue to carry him, regardless of what adjustments may be on the horizon from the opposition. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jonathan Hui-Imagn Images Despite dropping two of three games to the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend, things look much better for the Chicago Cubs now than they did a couple of weeks ago. The offense has experienced positive regression, and the pitching staff has held together in the wake of an abnormal number of injuries to the bullpen. What we shouldn't do, however, is underrate the role of defense in this early season turnaround. Defense has been a sort of hallmark of the current front office regime. In 2023, the Cubs ranked eighth as a team in Outs Above Average (16) and ninth in Defensive Runs Saved (33). They followed that up in 2024 with the seventh-ranked OAA (21) and ninth-ranked DRS (37) before shooting up the leaderboard last season, largely courtesy of the addition of Pete Crow-Armstrong to the everyday lineup. Their OAA ranked fourth (29) and their 84 DRS trailed only the Texas Rangers for the top spot. When you consider the roster configuration this season, it's not a surprise that they're on their way to replicating last season's results in 2026. By Outs Above Average, no team has a higher mark than the Cubs' 14 thus far. Their Defensive Runs Saved figure, at 16, reads as the fourth-best. The best way to support a pitching staff navigating as much attrition as the Cubs' is by playing sound defense behind them. Of course, the fact that this is happening isn't something that should ring as too much of a surprise given the names on the roster. Two of the top three spots for individual players in Outs Above Average are occupied by members of the Cubs. Pete Crow-Armstrong and Nico Hoerner each have an OAA of seven to date, a figure which trails only Bobby Witt Jr.'s eight. Crow-Armstrong has a 95 percent success rate against an 87 percent estimated success rate, with the leftover eight percent also trailing only Witt as the league's best. Hoerner isn't far behind there, with a seven percent success rate added. Of the two, Crow-Armstrong has made things look characteristically simple given his first-by-a-mile outfield jump (5.5 feet vs. average). Hoerner, meanwhile, has been a human highlight reel, contributing things like this: And this: And that was just in a single weekend. Those two serving as the linchpins of the Cubs' defensive game certainly tracks. What's somewhat more remarkable about the defense the team is providing, though, is the fact that five other regulars feature, at worst, average OAA numbers. Michael Busch has an OAA of three. Only Willson Contreras has been better at a position that defensive metrics don't particularly love. Likewise, Matt Shaw is at two, with each of Ian Happ, Alex Bregman, and Seiya Suzuki coming in at average (zero OAA). Of the team's regular starting nine, the only member of the group to check in below average defensively (by OAA) is Dansby Swanson. His -1 OAA currently sits at the bottom, which feels somewhat surprising when you consider that he was able to unlock something like this in LA this weekend: It's important to remember that Swanson got off to a bit of a slow start defensively last season. He ended up posting an OAA of four before year's end. Even if the defense has regressed a bit from his peak, it's not as if he's serving as some weak link here. There's been the odd misplay or difficult read pinning his production down a bit to date, but things should even out to be more in line with his defensive counterparts. That Swanson is even at the bottom of the leaderboard for the Cubs speaks to how strong this group has been. Even if we wanted to throw catchers in the mix, the Cubs have a tandem in Miguel Amaya & Carson Kelly that rank 32nd and 34th, respectively, in Catching Runs. The ranking itself isn't favorable given that only 45 catchers qualify for that leaderboard, but the only area where the two check in even slightly below average (-1) is framing. They're otherwise exactly average in the other components of the position (throwing & blocking). When you're able to supplement steady offensive production and a pitching staff that is hanging in there despite a myriad of injuries with defense at this level, you get things like a 10-game winning streak in April. While those other phases of the game have the tendency to wax and wane as a season progresses, defense is one thing that has the ability to remain consistent. So, while we're operating within a small sample for a collection of metrics that notoriously need larger ones, it feels like the defense is as dependable a unit as exists in the league. Even as the lineup and pitching staff regress and rebound according to their nature, the collective defensive effort of the Cubs should help to stabilize things regularly as we approach the summer months. View full article