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Image courtesy of © John Hefti-Imagn Images When the Chicago Cubs acquired Michael Busch ahead of the 2024 season, they were acquiring a player with significant offensive upside but without a defensive home. They gave him one almost immediately, taking a player who had primarily held his post at third base (with the occasional spell at second) and inserting him as the team's full-time first baseman. The early returns on Busch's defense were varying levels of fine. In that 2024 season, he ranked eighth in Outs Above Average among first basemen (2). That painted him as an above-average defender at the position, but it was the gradual improvement that was notable. His -1 OAA in March and April ranked just 21st before he jumped to the top of the leaderboard with 4 OAA in May. He remained above the average threshold for each of the next two months before slipping back under it in the final two months of the season. It's difficult to gauge a defender's quality over a one-month sample at any point during the season given the need for defensive metrics to develop over a larger one, but the variance in the OAA figure does speak to a player adjusting over time. There was steady improvement before some regression, and unfortunately for Busch, that kind of adjustment wasn't a mere one-year thing. The 2025 iteration of Busch found himself under that average threshold, finishing at -1 OAA for the year. He particularly struggled in moving to his right, where he posted -4 OAA (working to his left, he was at 1). This is where we run into a couple of notes about the nature of being a first baseman, especially as it applies to the world of defensive metrics. For one, players are not always entirely within your control. As a first baseman, you are more at the mercy of your teammates as the endpoint of a defensive play rather than the starting line. The Cubs got top-five play out of their middle infield in 2024, which compensated for the bottom-five work they got from third base. In 2025, though, Dansby Swanson's play at short slipped closer to the middle of the pack, while third base play remained in the bottom 10 of the league. So while Busch was still adjusting to the position, the fact that he wasn't getting the same brilliance from his infield cohort didn't do him any favors. There are also myriad factors that go into a metric like Outs Above Average that present certain limitations for a first baseman. Distance and time to the ball in play, distance from the base, and the speed of the runner are all factors. Positioning for first baseman helps them in this sense, but also leaves out some nuance that we might need to measure players at other positions given that they're where a play typically ends. The sample itself is smaller, and it ends up a bit more black-and-white for a first baseman. In Busch's case, the fact that he was still adjusting to the position while getting less consistent play from his infielders didn't indicate linear development between 2024 and 2025 in the way you might want to see from a player expected to hold it down in the long-term. The struggles he had moving to his right represented a need in an individual area of improvement, while bumping up the quality at a spot like third base would mitigate factors beyond his control. Because of that, we're able to see the value of the combination of steady play from Busch himself as a first baseman and the impact his fielders have on that. Which is likely why his play is looking better than ever in 2026. This season, Busch is atop the leaderboard for OAA by first basemen (6). It's a number matched by only Atlanta's Matt Olson, and one that not only serves as the best among his position but ranks 16th in the league overall. Perhaps even more important are some of the secondary elements that illustrate defensive quality. While Busch struggled mightily moving to his right in 2025, he's been extremely good at it in 2026. He's at 1 OAA moving in each direction and at 3 OAA moving in on the ball. Further, after posting a 76% success rate against a 76% estimated success rate last year, he's actually making more plays than expected this season. He's at a 79% success rate against an expected figure of 75%. Only San Diego's Ty France has a higher success rate added than Busch. Busch has his own role within all of this, of course. Now in his third year in the position, we're seeing a player settling in. That's evidenced by the fact that these numbers have improved despite almost no change in his starting position (both in depth and in angle). He's just become more adept at making plays, with his 10 scoops this year also setting him on pace to exceed his number in each of the last two years. Making the plays you need to make is one thing, but being able to make the read on picks is such a crucial part of first base play that the growth is evident within each part of this defensive spectrum. Quality infield play has helped. The Cubs are seventh in the league in defense at second (5 OAA), third at shortstop (8 OAA), and 10th at third base (1 OAA). The latter figure is obviously the most notable given where it's sat in each of the last two years, but Swanson's play regaining its form after a tough spell has also aided Busch in his defensive growth. When you factor in the offensive production from Busch, there's a certain confidence in his ability to man the position as a long-term staple. Not that either of the last two years were putting that in doubt, but we're looking at a player who has made strides without significant adjustment, indicating that time itself can be a great equalizer when you're hoping for a player to develop a specific facet of their game. That and the quality of his infield peers, of course. View full article

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

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