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Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images When the Chicago Cubs signed Michael Conforto to a minor-league deal late in the offseason, it was not a move met with much enthusiasm. Even as a needed left-handed bat off the bench that wasn't expected to fill a key role for the team, the fact that Conforto was coming off his worst season at the big-league level merely added him to a group of past-prime, post-hype bats to potentially fill such a role. And yet, not only did he emerge from that group with a roster spot out of camp, he found success. Across March & April, he slashed .300/.421/.433 with a 145 wRC+. What he lost in the average and on-base rate in May (.250 & .345, respectively) he compensated for in power; no Cub touched the .354 isolated power he posted in his 55 plate appearances that month. Even as the warning signs of a waning offense began to manifest, Conforto continued to provide steady value. The calendar has since flipped to June, and Conforto finds himself in a much different place and standing with the team. It's a minuscule sample thus far (16 plate appearances), but that offensive value that Conforto was providing has begun to not only decline, but evaporate altogether. For the 33-year-old, it's not so much the absence of production in a small sample; struggling at the plate is not an uncommon trend among the collective given how things have transpired for the lineup over the past few weeks. You could almost forgive him for turning in a .067/.125/.067 line with a -46 wRC+ considering that it wouldn't look entirely out of place when juxtaposed with his peers. Instead, the much larger concern lies here: Conforto's ability to make contact has plummeted. His already-modest 73 percent contact rate between the first two months of the year has fallen to just 62.5 percent in June, while his whiff rate has leapt from 28.6 percent in May to 46.9 percent here in June. His chase rate has also risen by roughly 12 percent, sitting at 35.1 percent in our current month. When the zone expands in the way that we're seeing from Conforto, the result is a player who has struck out eight times in 16 plate appearances. That's where the understanding of some struggle begins to dissolve. If Conforto was still demonstrating a quality command of the strike zone and putting balls in play, you could accept some substandard production considering that it wouldn't be unique for this group. However, losing all semblance of an approach and contact makes it a different story entirely. Considering those comprehensive struggles, it's not as if Conforto is at risk of losing his roster spot. As a key source of left-handed hitting off the bench, he'll likely be given an opportunity to straighten things out, even if Matt Shaw's return eats into some of his playing time. However, Conforto was already walking a fine line as a guy in on a minor-league pact from the start. Those type of players don't get the same type of run to learn by making mistakes. Which means that his path will be narrow and he'll have to navigate these newfound struggles within a much lower volume of playing time than a starter might. With how driven this cold snap is by a complete collapse in his plate approach, rather than any mechanical deficiency, there could be some optimism that Conforto reigns it back in. If not, his Cinderella run may already be at its end. View full article

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images It wasn't so long ago that the vibes around the Chicago Cubs felt immaculate. Fresh off an offseason that had them signing a notable bat in Alex Bregman, acquiring a closer-to-frontline-than-the-rest-of-their-rotation arm in Edward Cabrera, and leaning more heavily on established arms for the bullpen than reclamation projects, the thought was that their busy winter would yield benefits in the National League contention picture. The buzz was so palpable that MLB.com's Thomas Harrigan asked the following question after the release of Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections: Just how large is the Cubs’ edge in the NL Central? Such a line of questioning seemed warranted upon PECOTA's release, which had the Cubs atop the National League Central with 90.5 projected wins. That was exactly 10 better than the Brewers' 80.5-win projection and carried with it a nice 69.0% chance of winning the division and a robust 95.7% chance of reaching the postseason. That same energy carried over to FanGraphs upon their own release. While not quite as bullish on the percentages, FanGraphs had the Cubs at a 35.6% chance of winning their division on March 23. That was more than 10 percentage points better than Milwaukee's 24.3% odds. The gap was even wider in the general postseason odds, with the Cubs checking in at 53.9% and the Brewers at just 41.7%. Then came the Cubs' strong start. On May 7, the Cubs' chance of winning the division reached 63.4%, while their playoff odds topped out at 91.2%. The former figure trounced the Brewers' mere 12.4% odds, while the latter was up on their division rivals by roughly 40 points (50.8%). Since that point in the calendar, the Cubs have won just eight times while losing 20, with a 10-game losing skid baked into the middle of all that. It's done a number on their odds of both winning the division: And reaching the playoffs at all: The first visual comes as little surprise; the Cubs' struggles (in conjunction with the rapid ascent of the Brewers) has created a significant gap between the two sides in the standings. At this point, the 7.5-game gap not only has the Cubs in fourth, but may also be too much to overcome, given the teams' respective projections for the remainder of the year. That the Cubs' odds are looking so grim in a more general NL context speaks to the overall magnitude of their recent struggles. Since May 8, only the San Diego Padres have scored fewer runs than the Cubs' 95 and no team has demonstrated less on the power side than their .121 ISO. While that's happening, their staff ERA (4.93) is one of the league's five worst, with a home-run rate on fly balls (17.7%) that easily leads the league. Given that, it's not as if the waning optimism surrounding the Cubs' playoff odds is limited to FanGraphs. PECOTA may not have the Cubs following these struggles through to a massive decline in wins in their current projections (87.4), but the odds are not in their favor. They're currently looking at division odds that have shrunk to a mere 25.8% and playoff odds that are resting at 78.5%. It's not an unsurmountable deficit to overcome, according to these data, but it does speak to just how much these recent woes have impacted them in their postseason outlook. Whether that will or can change given the team's current roster construction and injury situation remains to be seen. But even at this point in early June, a swoon like the one the Cubs are on has massive ramifications for later on. Even if it still feels kind of early to be worried, it isn't. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images Whether it was at the point of his signing with the Chicago Cubs or the games that have been played since, no shortage of internet ink has been spilled about the skill set and performance of Alex Bregman. A hitter with only moderate power, the plate discipline component recognized as a pillar of his offensive game was expected to be a boon for his own performance and for the collective. His patience at bat has been as expected, but it's come without some of the benefits that one might typically expect. Arguably, his vaunted approach has become a detriment, instead of a source of value, to the team. In general, patience is an undeniably positive trait to possess as a hitter. However, therein lies a tipping point. There is a threshold where patience erodes production, because a player either won't or can't actually hit the ball consistently well enough to generate hits or power. It's a spiral in which Bregman currently finds himself mired. On the surface, Bregman's reluctance to chase is doing its job. He's in the 88th percentile in chase rate, the 83rd in whiff rate, and the 73rd in strikeout rate. The strikeout number itself stands at 17.1%, which trails only Nico Hoerner among Cubs regulars. His 9.9% walk rate is above average, but reads as very similar to the 10.3% mark he posted with Boston last year. At this point, it should be noted that Bregman's bag isn't parlaying discipline into walks. His career walk rate sits at 11.7% against a 13.6% career strikeout rate. So it's not necessarily a concern that his strikeout rate is up a touch while the walk rate is lower than his peak years in Houston. He was never trying to take pitches just to draw walks. Instead, the much larger concern lies in what that discipline is designed to do, but is no longer doing. Bregman's aim in being so selective is to generate hard, aerial contact. Since he broke into the league in 2016, his 86.4% contact rate ranks 36th among nearly 600 qualifying players. His 5.5% swinging strike rate ranks 20th among that same group. While he was never a masher—his 38.4 Hard-Hit% sits 291st—there's been a real and substantial loss of thump when he makes contact, which forces us to ask: is his approach starting to work against him? Is it part of his power outage? In terms of the actual plate discipline numbers, Bregman's 40.6% swing rate isn't that unusual. It's identical to the number he posted with the Red Sox in 2025, and almost perfectly in line with his 40.2% career mark. What's unusual, though, is his swing rate inside of the strike zone. Bregman is swinging in the zone 57.4% of the time, which would be tied with 2019 for the lowest in his career. As a result, he's sitting at a 22.3% called strike rate—currently the highest mark of his career, and about three percentage points above his career average. For the visual learners, here's what that looks like. This is Bregman's swing rate from 2016 to 2025: With any zone visual such as this, you expect there to be heavy red over the heart of the zone and then progressively fade the farther it gets. If we could see the percentages, we'd see the middle-middle portions read at or around 70 percent and the other more favorable parts of the zone in the 60s. That stands in heavy contrast to the chart we see in 2026: That up-and-in spot is a concerning element of its own. But over the heart of the zone, there's much less action overall. Percentages here are topping out in the mid-60s in the heart before quickly fading into the 50s—not that that should read as a surprise, when the cumulative rate has come down. In Bregman's case, it's not even that he needs to be more adventurous in expanding the zone to create more opportunities. He's simply missing those that already exist in the most obvious part of the zone in which he could be creating impact. That's further reflected in Statcast's zone-designated run value. Run value is divided into four areas of the zone: heart, shadow, chase, and waste. In chase and waste, Bregman is working with a positive run value. Even in the shadow of the zone, he's at a -5 run value that is actually his best mark since 2019. In the heart of the zone, however, he's working with a -15. That's the worst value of his career in that area (and not particularly close to any of its predecessors). Further, Bregman's swing percentage on pitches designated "meatballs" is at 63.3%, also representing a career low. A hitter who is too patient looks like one whose swing trends look good on the surface—as in, this guy restrains himself from hacking wildly—but with a waning contact rate. Bregman's 83.1 Contact% is his lowest since 2016 (as is his 88.7% contact rate on pitches inside the zone). Someone who's too patient is unable to parlay that contact into anything impactful. Bregman's hard-hit rate is down to its lowest mark in four years, while his .101 isolated power is more than 100 points lower than his career average. We also (gulp) have to acknowledge that it's possible Bregman is swinging less because he knows his swing is worse. The Cubs made a big bet on his loss of bat speed after a quad strain last year being temporary. They might have already lost that bet. Here's a chart showing his rolling swing speed over 100-plate appearance windows since the start of Statcast bat-tracking. The red line is the point at which he hurt his leg and missed almost two months last year: Uh-oh. Again, this isn't a player who is set in his ways and unwilling to take risks. Bregman would probably have made a larger adjustment to his approach by now, if he felt that he could. He needs to start swinging more, especially at pitches in the heart of the strike zone—but maybe he can't, at least the way he's always been able to. That would be terrible news for the Cubs. View full article

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images One could forgive Alex Bregman for getting off to a slow start in the first month of the 2026 season. That's kind of what his career norms said he should do. Unfortunately for Bregman and the Chicago Cubs, the trends that are typical of Bregman's career on a month-to-month basis haven't been so consistent in May. A slow start is characteristic of Bregman in certain respects. While many of the approach trends that are so foundational to his game are always present, the outcomes take a little bit longer to show up. That's not unique to Bregman, mind you. Plenty of players throughout the game's history have been notorious for slow starts. Sammy Sosa shook the habit once he emerged as a superstar, but in each of his first five full Aprils as a Cub, he had an OPS of .702 or lower. The following is Bregman's month-to-month distribution for his career, from 2017 to 2025: March/April: .261/.363/.414, 15.1 K%, 12.6 BB%, .153 ISO, 119 wRC+ May: .258/.345/.476, 13.9 K%, 10.9 BB%, .218 ISO, 125 wRC+ June: .268/.364/.476, 13.7 K%, 12.5 BB%, .209 ISO, 133 wRC+ July: .260/.352/.484, 13.0 K%, 11.5 BB%, .224 ISO, 130 wRC+ August: .323/.407/.556, 13.1 K%, 11.3 BB%, .233 ISO, 165 wRC+ September: .255/.352/.466, 12.2 K%, 12.0 BB%, .210 ISO, 124 wRC+ Bregman's a steady ballplayer. The line and each of the strikeout and walk rates remain consistent over the course of the year, based on his career averages. The most notable aspect of his month-to-month trends, though, lies in the power. Historically, his pop has heated up with the weather, peaking by the time the calendar reaches August. He doesn't hit even for doubles power very well in April. After that, he becomes a consistently dangerous slugger. That makes the funk in which Bregman is still mired worrisome. By this point in the calendar—regardless of what the line or the strikeout-to-walk ratio may look like—Bregman has typically seen a massive jump in both his hard contact rate and his isolated power. The 2020 season notwithstanding, there have been just two seasons wherein Bregman remained similar between the two months in his Hard-Hit%, and only one season where it actually dropped from April to May (2023). Otherwise, he's been good for, at minimum, a four-percentage point bump in hard-hit rate from the first month to the second. It's usually more like double that. Hard-hit rate is obviously important, because you can't hit for power without hitting the ball hard. A 65-point ISO jump between April and May reflects the way more hard contact has almost always led to more impact from one month to the next. That's not what the Cubs are getting at the front end of this five-year deal, though. Here is Bregman's distribution through the first two months of 2026: March/April: .258/.350/.371, 14.7 K%, 11.9 BB%, .113 ISO, 109 wRC+ May: .238/.319/.310, 20.2 K%, 8.5 BB%, .071 ISO, 83 wRC+ The concern isn't solely that Bregman is struggling in May. Virtually every hitter on the Cubs has spent the last three weeks reeling. In Bregman's case, though, he's bucking career trends, and his age is evidence against him in the trial accusing him of being permanently diminished. Should he finish out the month in the same fashion, he'd be in line for his worst May ever by strikeout rate, ISO, and wRC+. It'd be the second-worst batting average and third-worst on-base percentage in any May of his career. To top it off, his hard-hit rate dropped from 45.2% last month to 40.0% in May. The impact that usually begins to present itself in the second month of the season isn't here. Ordinarily, we wouldn't let numbers like these worry us too much, this soon. A combination of factors have made it feel much worse, though, from the fact that Bregman is just beginning a long-term deal at the doorstep of his mid-30s to the fact that everyone else is also sputtering (and thus, that the team is losing). Bregman enduring this kind of month is not supposed to happen, especially when the team needs him most. View full article

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