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Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images It's happened relatively quietly, amid the arrival of Kyle Tucker and the conspicuous rise of Pete Crow-Armstrong, but it would appear the Chicago Cubs have found their next franchise first baseman in Michael Busch. Probably. Maybe. It depends. We'll discuss the qualifier later. First base is not an easy position at which to excel. You need above-average power to even be considered among the better names—but not just power. Violent power. I hesitate to use "light-tower power," but it's perhaps the most appropriate description for the type we expect out of the spot. Being a burly, intense-looking person doesn't hurt. And even if you capture what the position requires on the offensive and aesthetic areas of the spectrum, there's a decent chance the stingy defensive metrics don't like the work you're turning in, anyway, given the phonebooth in which you're operating relative to other positions (a conversation we're tabling right now in favor of an offensive focus). In any case, Busch has been one of the most valuable players at the position since the start of last year. Going back to 2024, only five of his counterparts feature a higher fWAR than Busch's 3.9 figure, and only five are ahead of him in the wRC+ game (where Busch has posted a cumulative 128). The names ahead of him: Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Freddie Freeman, Bryce Harper, and Pete Alonso, with Matt Olson and Ryan O'Hearn swapping out for each respective category. So, you know, the good ones. That's interesting, because when you consider the archetype of the position, it's not one that Busch conveys in physicality or in more ground-level output. At 6 feet and 210 pounds, Busch checks in as one of the smaller players the position has to offer. And then there's this: Sure, yeah, Busch is able to put the barrel on the baseball better than most players at the position. But when one starts messing around with those categories, you start to lose him. He's 13th in average exit velocity (14th in max), 11th in average home run distance, and 20th in balls hit over 95 MPH. So if we're going by the archetype of the first baseman, it's not a box into which Busch neatly fits. Yet, here he is, sitting among the game's very best at the position in some of those more comprehensive metrics and refining the areas of his game in which he struggled last season. That's the important thing, too. Busch's improving defense and occasional power was always going to prop him up in the broader picture of the position; it's not like the talent pool runs too deep on a year-over-year basis. But Busch has been able to focus on those shortcomings, to catapult his production toward something more consistent, primarily in the plate discipline department. The most noticeable area for improvement last year was a strikeout rate that approached 30% (28.6). Only Rhys Hoskins had a higher K% among positional regulars last year, while Busch's CSW% (called and swinging strike rate) also sat as the fifth-highest (27.4%) as he navigated the zone in his first full season. This year, he's cut the K% to 21.7 (13th "highest") and has the ninth-best CSW% (25.1) among 27 qualifying first basemen. He's cut down the chase, brought up the in-zone swings, and produced more contact. He's also swinging at fastballs more than any other type of pitch, which lends itself to the six-percentage-point increase we're seeing in Hard-Hit% (46.0 as of this writing). As a result, you get this type of percentile chart: There's obviously room for further improvement in certain areas, but it's also a lot of deep red. Busch is, objectively, a very good hitter. Given where he stands within the positional context, you could call him an elite first baseman, and probably face minimal pushback. The upper echelon stands above him, but it's not like he's sitting miles behind the others. But! Can we consider him a franchise first baseman in the way that the likes of Freeman or Harper or Guerrero are? This question rests on the fact that Busch is still getting heavily shielded against pitchers of the same handedness. He has only 38 plate appearances versus left-handed pitchers, and 229 against righties. Obviously, the only answer to that is: no. Unless and until he shows the ability to hit lefties, and thus earns every day playing time, he's not a franchise anything. That label only goes on the guys who are cemented into your lineup. Despite the lackluster performance that the team is getting out of short-side platoon partner Justin Turner, Craig Counsell has made a concerted effort to get a right-handed hitter going against southpaws. It hasn't worked in the box score, but it's worked heavily in Busch's favor in matters of his own production. Plus, the league leader in plate appearances against lefties is Josh Naylor, with 94. The average plate appearance figure among qualifying first basemen is roughly 80. In the grand scheme of a season, it's not some tremendously high volume of chances Busch is missing; it might be 100 over a full campaign. As long as we're talking about the idea of a "franchise" first sacker, let's invoke Anthony Rizzo's name as part of this discussion. Busch is at roughly 830 PA, while turning in a line of .260/.351/.475, a 0.46 BB/K ratio, and a 133 wRC+ across 1.5 seasons with the Cubs. Rizzo's first two seasons (around 1,000 PA) went .259/.333/.441, a 0.52 BB/K ratio, and a 111 wRC+. There's some deeper context (age, for instance), and Busch lacks the charisma of a player like Rizzo, who easily latched onto the "franchise" qualifier, but the trajectory appears set for him to become exactly that for the Chicago Cubs. It doesn't make sense. He's small. He's quiet. He doesn't hit the ball as hard or as far. He doesn't get run vs. left-handed pitchers. And yet, everything Michael Busch has done in 1.5 years on the North Side has him set to help us forget about the first base bridge that existed between himself and Rizzo. You can be less than a franchise player, but still an extremely good one. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images A quick peak behind the curtain: When I watch baseball through a writing lens, I'm doing it almost robotically, examining mechanics, decisions, body language, and anything else my years of coaching have taught me to look for. It's more dutiful and academic than joyful. Luckily, I'm commonly able to find a middle ground with the fan side, and the fan side craves excitement. I want loud things. I want showy things. Nick Kurtz throwing his bat when he launches a walkoff homer that didn't land until the following afternoon? Yeah, I'm going to eat that up. Elly De La Cruz throwing a 98-MPH seed on a relay to nab a runner at home? That's cash. So Tuesday night very much fell into my wheelhouse, in multiple respects. The day started with former Chicago Cubs infielder Javier Báez getting his recognition for 10 years of service in Major League Baseball. If you haven't followed, Báez is having a resurgent season for the best team in baseball, carrying his best offensive output in roughly four years. So after the Cubs and Detroit Tigers shared a joint Instagram post acknowledging the milestone, Javy decided to celebrate accordingly: The game, and the season, have been heartwarming for fans of the Cubs to witness. There isn't a single member of the franchise (this side of Sammy Sosa) who has brought the level of excitement that Báez provided. He's gone through a lot since signing in Detroit, but is now proving to be a very important component for a very good baseball team. He's even back at shortstop on many days, after a significant and highly successful stint in center field. It's somewhat appropriate, though, that such a night for Báez came on the same evening in which Pete Crow-Armstrong showed out in his latest fashion. The heir to Báez in the excitement game, the eighth inning of Tuesday's Cubs win belonged to Crow-Armstrong. He made a diving catch in the top half of the inning to rob Brice Turang, before turning around and hitting a monster home run that sealed it to start the bottom half of the frame: Seventy-one feet covered. A 5% catch probability. A homer that traveled 452 feet, courtesy of a 111.5 MPH exit velocity, both of which are career bests. I genuinely hope that we don't start to take these types of moments for granted. Of course, neither half of the inning was surprising. We've seen Crow-Armstrong do each of these things. Sometimes it's one on a night. Other times, it's both, but with several degrees of separation. In this instance, we got the best of Pete Crow-Armstrong on each side of the ball, within about 10 minutes of each other. For it to happen the night in which Báez was not only recognized for his longevity in the sport but reminded us exactly who he is in doing so carries a certain degree of poetic weight. While Cub fans have, obviously, longed for this team to be a contender for the last handful of years, there's also been a rather dull air around the organization. It's not only that they weren't a very good baseball team. They were boring in their pursuit of the .500 threshold. In not only serving as a key element in the quality of their roster in 2025, Crow-Armstrong is carrying on the Báez legacy in the excitement department. It's that ol' chestnut: how can you not be romantic about baseball? (And don't say the obvious ways.) Of course, the two are always going to be inextricably linked. They were part of the same deal that saw Báez's departure and Crow-Armstrong's arrival. But the manner in which they play the game—the defense, the free-swinging, the flash, and all the other things Matt Ostrowski discussed earlier this month—allows that connection to remain strong. It's rooted in passion and in instinct. The two are linked not only in the transaction log, but in Cubs lore. Consider where things stand. Báez is officially back and in the public eye, given the success of his team. Crow-Armstrong is a viable candidate for Most Valuable Player in the National League. At their best, each can give you something you've never seen before or something that renews your appreciation for the game. Here's hoping Tuesday night won't be the last time we see the two overlap like this. View full article

As Brendan notes, it's possible that this could just be a blip. It's a small sample, after all. But it says a lot that Tucker is having difficulty generating quality contact while simultaneously putting the ball on the ground at his highest frequency in a given month (35.7%). In that light, the power decline isn't a difficult aspect to explain. The contact isn't there; nor is the elevation. The other layer, however, could provide some further insight. I mentioned Tucker's massive K% this month. It's not necessarily the result of chasing more pitches, or even taking more pitches for strikes. His 17.0% chase rate is lower than it was in March and April, and his called strike percentage is only about two percentage points higher than it was in either of the first two months (14.9%). He's just...whiffing. Tucker's whiff rate has climbed to 27.8% this month. It's at an even 20.0% inside the strike zone. Breaking and off-speed pitches have proven a particular source of woe for him this month, as they check in at whiff rates of 53.6% and 45.5%, respectively. More concerning is the fact that he's not getting more of them from opposing pitchers, either. He's actually experienced a decrease in breaking pitches, while offspeed stuff has maintained throughout the first three months of the year. But he's battling those pitches in a way that we didn't really see in the first two months. While the power dip and the strikeout leap are certainly different layers of Tucker's June struggles, it's hard to describe them as two entirely separate elements within his offensive performance. The former can likely be attributed to the finger sprain on some level (if not serving as the main thing), but it's also possible that it's affecting his overall ability to make contact—let alone quality contact. So, should we be concerned? It's hard to be, when you're talking about a hitter of Kyle Tucker's stature, especially because there is still value there in his ability to work counts. If this was a situation where the walk rate deteriorated, then you could start to draw conclusions about his approach escaping him. But he's clearly working through the lingering impact of injury on some level, leading him to both struggle with overall contact and, subsequently, contact quality. Ultimately, it's a two-week sample. It's hard to get too worked up about. It's glaring, to be sure, given the team's struggle to plate runs in the past week. But perhaps Monday's off day was just the ticket to serve as a springboard for a healthier Tucker to get back on track in the second half of the month. Tuesday was a good start. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images There's an old (probably overused) adage in the world of golf: drive for show, putt for dough. It speaks to the idea that sheer power will take you only so far. It's the efficiency on the backend that'll make the difference in matters of actually winning. It's not a like-for-like comparison with the world of baseball, but the 2025 Chicago Cubs are applying their own spin to the idea. After all, the Cubs are scoring more runs than just about everyone in Major League Baseball. Only the Los Angeles Dodgers have scored more than the Cubs' 349 runs, and nobody has a better run differential than their +102. They're a top-five team in terms of power (81 home runs, .186 ISO), too. Notably—and impressively—they're doing this without a ton of bat speed in the mix. A look at the bat speed leaderboard reveals a lot of what you would expect. On a team level, the New York Yankees are atop the heap (72.7 MPH average). Individuals sitting at or near the top include Oneil Cruz, Kyle Schwarber, and Aaron Judge. Again, nothing surprising. But when you're sorting through the leaderboard, what you won't find is a ton of involvement remotely near the top, on the part of this Cubs lineup. The fastest average bat speed by a qualifying Cubs hitter is Seiya Suzuki's, at 73.0 MPH. He's 70th. One must proceed even further to find Kyle Tucker, at 97th (72.2), before Ian Happ at 105th (72.0). The rest of the team's regulars include Pete Crow-Armstrong at 115th (71.8), Dansby Swanson at 152nd (70.8), Michael Busch at 182nd (69.7), and Nico Hoerner at 205th (68.2). If we wanted to change the perspective to include Carson Kelly, he'd be 186th of those with at least 200 swings. Given that, it's no surprise that the bat speed distribution (on a team level) looks as follows: The Cubs are effectively tied with the Cincinnati Reds for the lowest average bat speed among all 30 major-league clubs. Their rate of "fast" swings (over 75 MPH) is ahead of only those same Reds (15.2%). They're also ahead only of the Miami Marlins in swing length (7.2 feet). So it's a group with slow, short swings. And it's working. The y-axis of the above graph is the squared-up rate per swing. There, the Cubs rank fourth. They're also 11th in rate of competitive swings (90.4%) and just 23rd in swords (i.e. non-competitive swings), both no doubt a byproduct of the other data we're looking at here. Which is, quite obviously, the point. As a team, the Cubs feature a swing rate of just 47.0%, which ranks 17th. They're chasing at the league's fifth-lowest rate (26.3%), but swinging inside the zone at the seventh-highest clip (65.8%). As a result of their approach and their trends when actually swinging, only the Toronto Blue Jays feature a higher contact rate than the Cubs' collective 79.2%. When they do swing outside the zone, they're making contact at the fifth-best rate (58.5%) while making contact within the zone at a rate of 86.8 (which ranks ninth, but is less than one percentage point behind the league-leading Kansas City Royals). Although the Cubs are very much a middle-of-the-road squad in terms of hitting the ball hard (39.9% of their batted balls), they rank eighth in Barrel rate (9.8%). That, dear reader, is the point of all of this. Swing speed is, generally, a good thing. You can compensate for some things and generate a certain level of run production based on the speed and violence of a swing alone. But it's inefficient. As an example, the Yankees, for all the power they may feature, are also just 26th in contact rate and, subsequently, 27 runs behind the Cubs (with only one fewer game played) on the leaderboard. The Cubs have designed an approach that thrives on efficiency. They're making contact on the barrel of the bat. When you do that, good things tend to happen. It guides you through the wildly free-swinging Pete Crow-Armstrong experience at the plate or those months when Dansby Swanson swings at every single fastball he can find. It's a tradeoff, but one that is extremely worthwhile. No team in baseball has more accurate bats than the Cubs'. View full article

For Shaw to not only field that ball with the hop he got but make a throw that reached Michael Busch on the fly speaks to the improvement being made in a short time. And while the pick on its own is impressive enough, it's hardly the only time he's flashed that type of, well, flash with the leather in even the past week(ish): It feels like there's a decent chance that the Cincinnati Reds are tired of seeing Matt Shaw play defense. While the degree of difficulty in fielding the baseball wasn't nearly as high as the one on Sunday, the strength to get that throw across while losing balance absolutely is hard to generate. If you remember, arm strength was something of a concern in Shaw's transition to third base. In 2024, MLB Pipeline's scouting report referred to his arm as "fringy" and a liability. The follow-up in 2025 was a bit more direct in referring to it as "below-average" and that it would be stretched at third base. Sure: It's not that Shaw suddenly has arm strength that he didn't possess before, but he's developing the type of "strength" required to play the position by making an adjustment. There's an IQ thing taking shape here. Because even when Shaw doesn't uncork the throw, he's getting it over there in a rather savvy, efficient manner: That one felt intentional. You've got a catcher running, so there's no need to rush a throw that might get past Busch. Instead, you get it over there on the big hop and the rest takes care of itself. These are exactly the type of things you want to see from a player who was visibly struggling at the position upon his first taste of big-league action. While Outs Above Average isn't our preferred metric, it does, at least, give us the ability to examine the performance splits on a more specific level. In this case, monthly. Shaw's OAA in March and April (prior to his demotion) was -3. He had a success rate of just 58 percent, against a 63 percent estimated success rate. He particularly struggled moving to his left (-2) and back (-1). Since his return, however, Shaw has an OAA of 0, indicating that he's been exactly average. He's also exceeded the estimated success rate (75 percent success against 74 percent estimated). There's still some struggle to his left (-2 OAA), but he's average moving back, average to his right, and above-average moving in. These numbers, of course, aren't entirely reliable within a small sample (to say nothing of the fact that they don't tell us a lot about his arm), but they do at least allow us to put the improvement into some sort of concrete context. Ultimately, though, it's all about what you want to see. The eye test, the little bit of data available, looks good. There's confidence brewing here, on both sides of the ball. Even if he's never able to drum up elite production from a defensive standpoint, the stability he can provide at a position that has lacked it in that facet could be invaluable—to say nothing of what he's doing at the plate. View full article

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images The Chicago Cubs' approach to building a bullpen isn't a secret. Nor is it uncommon. There's no secret sauce. Unfortunately, though, the throwing-upside-at-the-wall-and-seeing-what-sticks approach does take a little while to brew. In their case, it took virtually all of March and April. By ERA, the Cubs had the 26th-ranked bullpen in the season's opening month and change (4.76). They were 27th in strikeout rate (19.2 percent), 26th in walk rate (11.8 percent), and 24th in strand rate (66.0 percent). While they were able to limit quality contact — their 35.6 Hard-Hit% was fifth-best — there was simply too much traffic for even a somewhat modest .294 BABIP to not bite them in the way that it did. As is expected with that type of performance, we lost some friends along the way. Nate Pearson pitched to a 10.38 ERA across 8 2/3 innings and was optioned to Iowa by the middle of the month. Eli Morgan posted an even higher mark before an elbow impingement sent him to the injured list, where he still resides indefinitely. While a different context entirely, Colin Rea wasn't long for relief work, as injuries in the rotation forced him into a starting role. And that's just in the middle of the 'pen. The responsibility of finishing games that were otherwise propped up by one of the league's top offenses was a burden. The Cubs blew seven saves during the first month of the year. Interestingly, none of them were from Ryan Pressly, whose 2.25 ERA covered for brutal peripherals (a 5.09 FIP & a walk rate that exceeded a floundering strikeout number). It was a harbinger of things to come, as the veteran righty lost his job in the month that followed. Ultimately, the March & April group was a hodgepodge of veteran (as in, some of these guys are old) arms attempting to navigate low power and heavy traffic. Even as the Cubs at large held together against a brutal schedule, the bullpen was the part of the roster that was clearly the weakest... until that calendar read "May 1", at least. Last month was a different story entirely for relievers on the North Side. Their 2.37 collective ERA was the best in all of baseball. The walk rate climbed all the way to seventh (8.3 percent), and the strand rate took over the top slot (78.9 percent). While they still weren't posting gaudy punchout numbers (21.8 percent), the BABIP fell to .261. Most essential within the strong output is that a clear core of the '25 bullpen started to take shape. Each of Caleb Thielbar (8.0 innings), Drew Pomeranz (9 1/3 innings), Brad Keller (14 2/3 innings) blanked the opposition with perfect 0.00 ERA marks. Chris Flexen was able to accomplish the same task in a largely multi-inning role (14 1/3 innings in eight appearances), as was Ryan Brasier (albeit in much more limited work in his 3 1/3 innings off the IL). Perhaps the most important development for the group, though, came in the form of Daniel Palencia as the team's primary ninth inning option. With Porter Hodge suffering an oblique injury, the team's most electric arm was pressed into the closer role and absolutely delivered. Through an even dozen innings of work, he posted a 1.50 ERA and five saves. Even with one blip in Miami, the emergence of his 98th percentile fastball velocity appears to have settled the most pressing issue in the 'pen. Rather than work with the least bad (or, at best, questionable) option, Craig Counsell was able to operate with a little bit of freedom in turning to those presenting actual efficiency in their appearances. As such, Pressly's tightrope act was relegated to garbage time, while Julian Merryweather's velocity decline cost him a role via mid-month DFA. So, it's no wonder that certain elements that we saw escape the team's ability to navigate the middle and late innings became much more settled last month. That's primarily reflected in strike one. The Cubs ranked 22nd in first-strike percentage in March/April, at 59.1 percent. Subsequently, opposing hitters were only swinging at a 45.1 percent clip (also 22nd) and chasing only 31.8 percent of the time (13th). The whiff rate sat at just 9.8 percent (27th). In May, though, that first strike figure shot up to 66.5 percent (1st). Along with it came the swing rate, at 48.2 percent (7th). By forcing hitters into swings that they may be otherwise unwilling to make, you're putting the ball into the hands of your defense (given the still-relative absence of overall strikeout stuff). When you do that, rather than take the ball out of their hands entirely through the death knell of any bullpen (read: walks), you're going to find more consistent and sustainable success. That's what we saw in May. Ideally, that's what we'll continue to see. It's not always going to be as sterling as it was last month (especially as temperatures heat up). But, there are clearly some reliable options that have emerged for Counsell to circulate as the rotation gets healthier (Shota Imanaga) and more consistent (Ben Brown). It wasn't pretty — working through the ugliness in the early going and letting "your guys" settle in rarely is — but the Cubs' bullpen appears to have found its footing. View full article

We're at the end of May, and the Chicago Cubs remain atop the National League Central. Within the broader National League Context, too, they look like a legitimate contender when all three phases are working together. And while the pitching phase remains imperfect and unhealthy, there are signs of a framework coming together for the longer term of 2025. Notably, the bullpen in the season's second month was much improved from what we saw in the opening stretch of March & April. By ERA, it was a top-three group in all of baseball (2.67). In particular, Ryan Brasier, Caleb Thielbar, Chris Flexen, and Brad Keller were able to pitch through varying stages of the month without allowing a single run (though, of course, Brasier specifically did not return from injury until near the end of May). While some roles still need to be ironed out, there's a reliable group emerging, with the below names carrying the team through the month within those roles. #3: Matthew Boyd May Stats: 28.0 IP, 3.54 ERA, 3.04 FIP, 30.4% K-rate, 1.8% BB-rate, 1.04 WHIP Perhaps the best value signing of the offseason, Boyd finds himself among the top three on this list for the second consecutive month. Within a starting staff marred by injury (Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele), home run issues (Jameson Taillon), or overall inconsistency (Ben Brown), Boyd has been a steadying force for the rotation. What's been even more impressive is the gap between his strikeout and walk rates. While not quite at a career-best rate, Boyd's strikeout rate for the year (24.9 percent) is above his career average, with eight strikeouts in three separate outings within his last four. In those starts, he's punched out a combined 27 hitters against just a pair of walks. It isn't always a flawless outing, but the value of such stability cannot be overstated. #2: Drew Pomeranz May Stats: 10.1 IP, 0.00 ERA, 2.00 FIP, 32.5% K-rate, 5.2% BB-rate, 0.58 WHIP While even I have openly questioned how long Pomeranz can sustain his success while essentially throwing just one pitch, the veteran reliever just continues to simply not allow runs. He's barely allowing baserunners while finding success via efficiency. His 74.5 first strike percentage is a career high (by 14 percent), and he's getting called strikes a shade over 20 percent of the time. So, while he's not garnering massive whiffs (just 9.7 percent), he's freezing hitters into not swinging with his fastball movement. An encouraging sign is that the knuckle curve is starting to manifest a little bit more. He's thrown it at least 20 percent of the time in half of his last eight appearances. For a pitcher already filling up the strike zone with a hard, moving four-seam fastball, making that pitch back into a regular feature could be devastating for opposing hitters. For now, we'll take a month without a run allowed, especially when the last one (on May 31st) came as an opener in a shutout victory. #1 (May Cy Young) Daniel Palencia May Stats: 12.0 IP, 1.50 ERA, 1.35 FIP, 33.3% K-rate, 6.6% BB-rate, 0.75 WHIP Don't look now, but it appears that the Chicago Cubs may have found their closer. What started as Ryan Pressly's job was passed on to Porter Hodge prior to the latter's oblique injury. When Hodge hit the Injured List, Craig Counsell gave his most electric arm a crack at the ninth inning. Despite a blip in Miami during the month, Palencia has been excellent, recording five saves during the month. His 33.3 percent strikeout rate led the team's staff in May while he's gotten the ball on the ground almost half the time (48.0 percent). His 99.2 MPH average fastball velocity sits in the 98th percentile, as does his 2.1 percent barrel rate. It's just an extraordinarily enticing blend of outcomes for a guy that has ran with the opportunity to close games. The Cubs have other relievers that have been effective, but you want a certain degree of violence in the ninth. Palencia has got it. View full article

Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images Stop me if you've heard this one before: Michael Busch comes out of the gate hot. He slugs .500 in March and April, providing consistent power in a potent Chicago Cubs offense. The calendar flips over to May, the power disappears, the strikeout rate rises, and we're pondering whether what we saw in the season's first month was even real. While such a scenario may speak more to what we saw in 2024, it's hard to ignore the parallels between Busch's rookie campaign last season and what we've seen thus far in 2025. It's an imperfect comparison. Maybe even a dramatic one. But it's hard to ignore some of the similarities between his output in the early going of each campaign. The 2024 March/April iteration of Michael Busch looked like a long-term solution at first base. He hit .266, reached base at a .333 clip, and posted an isolated power figure of .234. His wRC+ checked in at 130. He also struck out at a rate north of 30 percent (more on that in a moment). When May rolled around, he looked like hardly the same hitter. The average fell to just .208 (even with a .342 BABIP). The ISO dropped nearly 70 points to .167. His wRC+ barely scratched above the "average" threshold, at 104. His K% managed to sit five points higher, at 37.2 percent. Busch would, of course, go on to stabilize in certain respects. Even if the power wavered throughout the year, he was able to cut the strikeout rate in each month as the season progressed, while improving his quality of contact. There was a maturity there that assured him of the first base position ahead of 2025. That position remains stable, but the same April-to-May trend remains present. In March and April of this year, Busch went for a .276 average. He ISO'd .245 and posted a 152 wRC+. The strikeout rate remained high, in a relative sense, but came down massively from last year's start (24.8 percent). But since the calendar read "May 1," we're witnessing a lot of the same things. Busch is hitting just .221 this month. His ISO has cratered in comparison with the opening month, at .147. His wRC+, as of this writing, is at 103. The biggest change is in the strikeout rate. It's still up from last month, but not what it was in 2024 (25.3 percent). Like last year, he's managed to increase the walk rate in the midst of struggles elsewhere. Busch has stabilized his game in comparison to last year, but the power dip in consecutive years is a rather jarring feature of his game. Especially because, at first blush, there isn't much in the way of indicators. He's experiencing a higher quality of contact (around 37 percent Hard%), has largely cut or remained steady in his whiff rates, and has virtually an identical groundball rate in May (37.5) that he did in March & April (35.5). Contact is quite similar, too. It actually defies logic. Busch has a higher average exit velocity in May. A steeper launch angle. A higher xSLG. He's finding the barrel with more frequency, too. Even with a slight increase on the chase-and-miss front, there is nothing that indicates Busch should be struggling to find power to this extent, let alone feature an ISO of just .107 in the last two weeks. So what gives? It might be as simple as where in the zone Busch is putting his bat. The following is Busch's zone profile in March & April: Nothing surprising here, especially given the power output. Swings in the upper two-thirds of the zone, as well as on the inner portion of the plate. When you look at Busch's swing against the above visual, it makes sense. And then you get to May: Some similar trends exist through the middle of the zone vertically. But there's more emphasis on the lower portions of the zone on the horizontal side. It may not be intentional, but you're talking about a guy with 19th percentile bat speed. As good as everything else looks, generating enough lift to create impact from where in the zone Busch is swinging more frequently this month is going to be a difficult task. For Busch, it looks like one he can't overcome at present. Michael Busch is very much the hitter we expected from a growth standpoint. The strikeouts are down, the contact is up, and the approach has remained steady even through a big ol' power dip. It appears he just needs to work on those pitches in the upper portion of the zone in order to get it back. View full article

Image courtesy of © Katie Stratman-Imagn Images The names atop the FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement leaderboard as of this writing read as such: Aaron Judge: 4.6 Pete Crow-Armstrong: 3.1 The gap between the two notwithstanding, the Chicago Cubs' centerfielder has been the second-most valuable player in the majors thus far. We knew his baserunning and defensive prowess would carry him to a respectable figure there, regardless of his offensive contributions. To some extent, it has; his 3.2 BsR baserunning metric ranks sixth in the sport, and his Fielding Run Value figure of 9 paces the league. What really stands out through nearly two months of the year, though, is the power he's generated at the plate. Crow-Armstrong has already slugged 14 home runs in 225 plate appearances (a top-10 total), and boasts a gaudy .290 isolated power (ISO, the difference between slugging and batting average). So not only do you have a player with 97th-percentile sprint speed, but you have one who's putting the ball over the fence almost as often as anyone in baseball. An interesting thing to think about in this is whether we should have expected it. Since being drafted in 2020, the book on Crow-Armstrong is exactly what you'd imagine it'd be. Scouting reports may have indicated some power, but speed and defense were always expected to be the foundational components of his game. Was there anything sitting in the draft scouting or in his minor-league output that indicated such power was on the horizon? The following is a collection of scouting reports before or upon Crow-Armstrong's selection 19th overall by the New York Mets in 2020. I've included only a selection in which his power potential is noted. MLB Pipeline: FanGraphs: Baseball America: Baseball Prospectus: The fascinating part of these is that there wasn't a consensus on this aspect of his game. If you go through the remainder of those reports, you get the expected bits about the other tools. When it came to his pop, though, predictions varied widely in both confidence and direction. Crow-Armstrong's minor league output gave us little reason to think that power like this was in the cards early in his career. He hit 16 homers across two levels in 2022, and 20 between two in 2023. But while there was a slight increase between the two seasons, he hit only 15 between Triple-A and the major-league level last year. Given the variance in the initial scouting and the relatively low home run totals while scaling the ladder, it's impossible to say that we expected what he's done to this point. A fun aspect about Crow-Armstrong is that he can derive "power" from his speed, stretching singles to doubles and doubles to triples. But he's also flashed a Barrel rate around 14%, driving the ball to a degree that we didn't expect. Given the bat speed, which is up about 1.2 MPH from last year, he should continue to find success in putting the ball over the fence while driving up the rate-based power figures (ISO, SLG) courtesy of his speed. The other tools were already helping him to compensate for the hyperaggressiveness of his approach. But if you're going to continue to get star-level power output from him, this is a whole new ballgame. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images If you can count on Pete Crow-Armstrong to do one thing, it's this: he's going to swing. It was the prevailing concern coming into his first full season at the major-league level. Could he tamp down the aggressiveness, in order to realize his offensive upside? And if he couldn't, how long could he compensate with the other areas of his game before it started to become problematic? Those concerns were amplified when it was something he continued to demonstrate early on. Even now, in what is increasingly looking like a genuine breakout campaign, the trend continues. Only Boston's Ceddanne Rafaela has a higher swing rate than Crow-Armstrong's 61.3%. It's not like he's zeroed in on the strike zone, either. In fact, his 43.8% chase rate is up from last year's mark. The overall swing and whiff rates remain virtually identical to last year. So, even if you were hoping for modest growth in the approach, the numbers aren't indicating that it's on its way to fruition. But what if it also is? Sure, Crow-Armstrong is still hacking in a way you'd prefer to see toned down at least a marginal amount. There's something to be said for contact, however, and he's finding ways to get the bat on the baseball. The contact rate is up about one percentage point, overall, but is especially up inside the zone; he's gone from a 73.2% zone contact rate in 2024 to an 81.6% rate in 2025. That's an encouraging concept on its own, but is especially so given that he's become slightly more aggressive depending on the situation. When he's behind in the count, Crow-Armstrong is more aware that soft stuff is coming—and doing a better job of laying lumber on it. When a pitcher is ahead, the chance of a breaking or offspeed pitch goes up. Against an aggressive swinger like Crow-Armstrong, it represents a tremendous advantage. But it looks, so far, like he's keen on taking that advantage away. The whiff against fastballs has remained constant, but he's managed to cut each of the breaking & offspeed whiff rates by about 13 percentage points. That's massive. It's not flawless, of course. The above is indicative of overall whiff, but he's also dropped the chase and whiff rate on those two pitch types. So far, however, he's just switched what he's sitting on. In pitcher's counts, he's looking for the soft stuff and trying to catch up to the fastball. That's led to more chase above the zone and less contact against the heat. But objective no. 1 in working your way from behind in a count is getting the offspeed and breaking pitches out of the way. Fight them off, and live to see another pitch. It's fairly conventional baseball wisdom, but Crow-Armstrong has embraced and weaponized it as he's worked to build up his contact ability in the face of still-questionable plate discipline. It's working, and serves as yet another thing that makes this man one of the most dangerous hitters on the planet when he's going well. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images Ben Brown will take the ball for the Chicago Cubs on Monday night in Miami for his ninth start of the year. He's up to 16 starts, 24 total apppearances, and 97 innings in the majors, going back to last year, but it doesn't feel like we're all that close to feeling certain about a long-term role on Craig Counsell's pitching staff. Could he be a rotation fixture? Maybe. An effective multi-inning reliever? Perhaps. A lockdown guy in the late innings? Sure. At present, Brown's role is locked in not by performance, but by circumstances beyond his control. A spring injury to Javier Assad pushed him into the starting five. Further injuries to Justin Steele and Shota Imanaga ensured he'd be there for the foreseeable future. The performance to date, though, has been something of a mixed bag. Brown's ERA currently sits at 4.75. His FIP (3.32) indicates he should be at least a little better in the broad scheme of run prevention (though his xERA does still sit at 4.18). He's inducing more ground balls (43.0%, but from roughly 37% last year), but is also in just the 34th percentile in Hard-Hit% (43.4). His strikeout rate is the selling point: a sturdy 26.2%. Somewhat surprising is the fact that Brown is more along the average line in walk rate; his 8.4% walk rate is not egregious. I say that's surprising, because Brown's starts are heavily dictated by what type of command he demonstrates that day. On occasion, he's looked untenable as a starter, but he does appear to be on his way to stabilizing there lately, thanks to one key element: strike one. That seems like an obvious concept. Yes, if you did not know, a pitcher's success is heavily reliant on what type of command said pitcher is able to demonstrate. But with Brown, the line seems a little bit finer than with a more seasoned starting pitcher. Until his last three starts, Brown was unable to work his way deep enough into games. He threw four innings in his second start (vs. San Diego), four innings in his fourth start (vs. Arizona), and 3 2/3 innings in his fifth start (vs. Philadelphia). He ran up pitch counts of 79, 100, and 80, respectively, across that trio of outings. That's 259 pitches in exchange for just 35 outs, averaging roughly 23 pitches per frame. When you're working with a bullpen that hasn't been terribly reliable through the first two-ish months of the year, efficiency is desired above almost everything else. From a command standpoint, those were his three worst outings of the year—again, somewhat obvious when you look at the raw pitch counts. But Brown hit the zone for strike one only 54.4 percent of the time against San Diego and 66.7 percent of the time against Philadelphia. His first start against the Athletics notwithstanding, those are his two worst first-strike rates of the year. If you factor in overall Zone% (while again excluding the A's start), those three account for his worst starts of the year in terms of zone efficiency. He went 54.4%, 52.0%, and 50.0% across those three outings. Obviously, you don't want to fill the strike zone all the time, but you need to at least entice hitters to swing on occasion. But something has happened in each of Brown's last three starts (Milwaukee, San Francisco, Miami) that should increase confidence in his longer-term viability as a starter. He's been more efficient. He's maintained a first-strike rate of at least 71%, while catching the zone at 59.5%, 58.3%, and 66.7% rates, respectively. With the exception of a start against the Dodgers back on April 12, those are his three highest rates in both respects. Focusing on the concept of strike one specifically, an interesting thing happens when he's working with a higher rate: With the exception of that wonky start against Philadelphia, the higher the first strike rate, the lower the ERA in a given start. The above graph would look much smoother had it not been for the April 26 outing. Nonetheless, it does give us a nice little visual as to what Brown can accomplish when he's working with efficiency to open up counts. Not that any of this rings as surprising, but it does matter more to Brown than to others. He faces two major limitations, beyond or alongside whatever lack of command shows up on a given day: His fastball shape is a drag on the utility of his plus velocity. He's induced whiffs on fewer than 19% of swings against the heater in each of his big-league seasons, and when batters do put that pitch in play, it's often in the air, with some authority. Ball one isn't just a head start on a walk. He can't afford to work from behind, because when hitters can sit on the fastball, they do major damage. Relatedly, Brown has just two pitches in his arsenal. That both makes it easier for hitters to lock in on the fastball when they have count leverage, and risks leaving Brown more exposed than most pitchers the second and third time through the order if he works deep counts. He needs to get quick outs. The way to get quick outs is to throw strikes and take control of the at-bat. There isn't quite enough data yet to say that Brown should be opening up with a specific pitch type. It is worth noting, though, that three of his most efficient starts have come in three of his four starts where he opened up with the four-seam the most. Regardless of type, it's ultimately about strike one. If Brown's got that, he's got everything. View full article

Image courtesy of Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images On the last day of April, there was one hitter in Major League Baseball that featured a better wRC+ than Chicago Cubs catcher Carson Kelly. That hitter was Aaron Judge. Yes, as the calendar prepared to flip over to May, the only hitter demonstrating a more impressive offensive performance is the guy known for being perhaps the best pure hitter on the entire planet. We had no reason to think what was happening was sustainable. Nonetheless, Kelly maintained a 257 wRC+ through nearly 70 plate appearances. His 22.4 percent walk rate led the league. Each of his average (.360), on-base percentage (.507), and isolated slugging (.480) fell somewhere in the top five among hitters with at least 50 PA. His Hard-Hit% sat sixth, at 60.6. There were plenty of encouraging things happening underneath the surface, too. Kelly's chase rate over that stretch was just 12.8 percent. Even Kyle Tucker, who was as choose-y as anyone in the Cubs lineup, was expanding the zone at a 22.8 percent clip. Kelly's whiff rate was just 7.0 percent, while his contact rate sat at nearly 84 percent. It all had Kelly looking like not only the ideal signing for a Cubs team looking for a bit of an offensive bump from behind the plate, but one of the best signings in recent Major League history. Of course, the regression monster comes for everyone eventually, especially when you're talking about a veteran catcher with only a modest history of offensive success. Now halfway through May, the monster has consumed him almost entirely. While we're obviously looking at a smaller sample only halfway through the month, Kelly's output nevertheless has dwindled quite gravely. Going into Friday's game against the White Sox, he's hitting only .182 this month; his OBP has plummeted to .289. Part of that is due to the reversal of his strikeout & walk rates. The former has doubled to 18.4 percent while the latter checks in nine points below his mark through April 30th (13.2 percent). The power has been nonexistent compared to what he turned in last month, with just a .121 ISO through two weeks of May. His wRC+ this month is at just 74. So not only has he not been the second-best hitter in baseball, he's now 26-percent worse than league average. [Editor's Note: Kelly did record two hits, including a double, and a walk in five plate appearances in the series-opener on Friday. Nevertheless, his stats remain in precipitous decline from his otherworldly start.] Worse yet is that at least some of these struggles are due to Kelly's own lapse in the approach. His chase rate has more than doubled (26.1 percent) despite almost no movement in his overall Swing%, which means that he's exchanged a disciplined, in-zone approach for a useless expansion of the zone. He's making contact at a rate six percent lower than he did last month, and even that's with only a two percent dip in the rate at which opposing pitchers come into the strike zone. Without the level of discipline that Kelly was able to showcase in April, the most telling trend in all of this emerges: As it would turn out, it's harder to generate quality contact when you're not concentrating your swings within the strike zone. Or at least it is when you're a hitter without elite upside that has a delicate balance to maintain in order to find offensive success. Instead, you make softer contact. Softer contact means less batted ball luck and less elevation. Not that his April BABIP was tremendously high (.289), but it's at .200 in May. His GB%, on the other hand, has spiked from 40.0 percent in April to over 60 percent halfway through May. It's not a difficult mystery to solve. Kelly's inability to drive the ball is derived largely from a ballooning of the zone in which he's willing to swing. It's unfortunate reality for Carson Kelly that his (expected) regression has been wrought almost entirely by his own hand. Pitchers haven't altered their approach much, either in terms of usage or zone. But Kelly's loss of discipline in the approach bears the weight of such regression. What's even worse is the timing of the offensive step back. Without Ian Happ in the lineup, Craig Counsell had shifted to a willingness to deploy both Kelly & Miguel Amaya in the lineup, with Kelly getting two of his last three starts as the team's designated hitter. Given the struggles, though, it doesn't appear to be a role he's long for, ynless the approach finds some refinement and a return to form in a most expedient fashion. View full article

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images If it looks like the Chicago Cubs are struggling to score runs, your eyes are not deceiving you. After hanging 5.9 runs per game in March and April, they're down to 4.9 in May. After reaching base at the league's second-highest clip (.341) during the season's first month-plus, they're sitting 22nd thus far in May (.295). They were the league's third-best team in March and April by wRC+ (124). In May, they're ranked 15th (100). Now, it's not as if the Cubs suddenly became a merely average offense just because the calendar flipped, and there's a sizeable gap in the sample between 31 games of March and April and the dozen they've played in May. There's clearly a struggle happening right now, though, given that they've dropped a run per game and are scraping across any run production they can find of late. Central to the team's offensive production is Kyle Tucker, which likely means that central to the team's current "struggle" is... Kyle Tucker. After blazing out of the gate and looking like an early candidate for National League MVP, Tucker has sort of fallen off in May. The only question is whether this is cause for concern or if Tucker is simply confronting the ebb and flow of baseball. Tucker's first five weeks were stellar. He turned in a 158 wRC+, reached base at a .386 clip, and ISO'd .270. He was lifting the ball in the air almost 75 percent of the time (between flyballs and line drives), which worked in tandem with a 43.8 Hard-Hit%. He walked (15.2%) more than he struck out (12.4%). Even being pinned down slightly by a .276 BABIP, he was able to be the driver of the team's elite run production in the season's first month. May hasn't been as kind to Tucker. He's hitting a mere .217. His groundball rate has spiked to 42.5%, after lingering around 25 percent in the opening month. And while we recently discussed the contributions he was still able to make in the midst of such struggles, it does feel like those have become fewer, given the Cubs' need to scratch runs across rather than operate in a smoother, easier offensive fashion in matters of scoring runs. So should we start to worry about the state of Tucker's offensive game? Not necessarily, long-term, given his status among the game's top hitters. But is there something plaguing him at present that we should worry about? The short (and perhaps obvious, given the aforementioned status) answer is no. Sure, there are a couple of figures that have dropped (or, in the case of groundballs, risen) dramatically. But his wRC+ is holding steady at 120 for the month (148 for the year). He's hitting the ball hard with more regularity this month (45.0 Hard-Hit%) and has continued the trend of walking more than he's striking out. He isn't approaching the zone any differently, and there isn't any discernible difference in the types of pitches at which he's swinging. To say nothing of the fact that his percentile distribution still looks like this: Instead, it looks like what's unfolding for Tucker is a matter of bad luck, above all. His BABIP this month has plummeted to .189. That's not a unique situation in the larger context of the team, given that the Cubs' .234 collective BABIP ranks 29th this month. If there was a telling trend within his approach or some sort of change in his ability to generate quality contact, maybe we'd be having a different discussion. As it is, the struggles of Tucker appear to be entirely outcome-based. The unfortunate reality is that it's part of the game. You're going to have runs like this where things just aren't falling. Elite as Kyle Tucker may be, he isn't immune to such streaks. As long as the underlying data suggests he's working in the same fashion, it's just a waiting game until things start to fall for him. View full article