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Image courtesy of © Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images Catching is rapidly becoming a position that is very difficult to project. In addition to all of the other modern responsibilities that a catcher has in terms of managing a pitching staff, the physical toll the position takes on the body makes it tough to post quality numbers year in and year out. In fact, this was the subject of a recent article at FanGraphs, by Ben Clemens. Within the article, which you should read, Clemens notes that every year, there are new players who pop up to be considered the best catcher in baseball. Yet, every year, one of them immediately falls off to be replaced by someone else. “It’s hard to stand out all the way at catcher, and it’s also hard to stay near the top for long,” he concluded. Over the past two seasons, the Cubs have artfully straddled a line at catcher. Carson Kelly and Miguel Amaya certainly aren’t big-name players like Cal Raleigh or Adley Rutschman, but they are both decent big-league backstops. Since the start of 2025, the Cubs are fifth in baseball in FanGraphs WAR from the catcher position, and they're 13th so far in 2026 alone. The Cubs have gotten some production from Reese McGuire and Moises Ballesteros behind the dish, too. However, given that Kelly and Amaya have received the super-majority of the playing time this season, we’ll focus on those guys. Neither is spectacular defensively, though they both manage to do pretty much everything well enough that it doesn’t significantly hamper their value. Catcher Catcher Blocking Runs Catcher Framing Runs Catcher Stealing Runs Carson Kelly 1 0 -3 Miguel Amaya -1 0 1 The three metrics above, all of which come via Baseball Savant and are from 2026 only, convert a catcher’s ability to block pitches, frame pitches, and control the running game into runs. So, for example, Kelly’s pitch blocking has contributed one run to the Cubs this season, while Amaya’s has cost the Cubs one run. The only number up there that isn’t hanging right around average is Kelly’s -3 stealing runs. That's the third worst figure in baseball. He's caught just 11% of attempted basestealers this season, despite Baseball Savant estimating he should have caught 24% of them. Where both guys stand out a little bit more is at the plate. The team’s 107 wRC+ over the past two seasons is sixth in baseball. Their 104 wRC+ this season is ninth. Interestingly, both guys have maintained a similar level of offensive production between 2025 and 2026, but in completely different ways. Last season, Kelly rode a 23.9% pulled air rate to a .249/.333/.428 batting line, 115 wRC+, and 17 home runs. This season, his pulled air rate is down to 15.2%, which has resulted in significantly less power; he has just four home runs roughly halfway through the season. Yet, he's maintained a 116 wRC+, thanks to an elevated batting average of .280 and an on-base percentage of .366. Instead of the pulled balls in the air, the catcher’s ground ball rate has gone from 38.2% last season to 46.3% this year. He's seeing significantly better results on those ground balls this year, which unfortunately suggests to me that his current batting line might not be sustainable: Year Batting Average on Ground Balls 2025 .214 2026 .342 As for Amaya, he hit a robust .281/.314/.500 last season, good for a 124 wRC+. This year, his slugging average is down to .347, but like Kelly, his on-base percentage has increased—to .352, which is managing to keep his batting line above average with a 104 wRC+. In 2024, Amaya had just a 6.3% walk rate, and last year, it was just 3.9%. This year, it’s all the way up to 11.6%. That's because he has completely cut his swing rate on all pitches. Last season, he swung at 54% of the pitches he saw. This year, it’s just 43.7%. This has its drawbacks since Amaya is neglecting to swing at hittable pitches in the heart of the zone, too. Though, it all might be intentional: Amaya’s swing speed is down over two miles per hour, from 72.2 mph last season to 70 mph this year. He missed a large chunk of last season with an oblique injury. Perhaps he doesn’t feel like he can swing as hard coming off of that injury, and this is his way of compensating. Regardless, the Cubs’ catching duo has been a hallmark of stability over the past two seasons. Catcher is a position that is hard to remain consistently good at, yet the Cubs have managed to do just that with a couple of mostly unheralded guys. They'll need both players to remain productive if they want to stay afloat in the playoff race down the stretch. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images There’s been a lot of consternation about Dansby Swanson this year, and rightfully so. He has been really bad at the plate, after all. Heading into their late-June series against the New York Mets, his wRC+, which is an all-encompassing offensive statistic where 100 is average, sits at just 77, according to FanGraphs. Not only does this mean that he is 23 percent worse than the league-average hitter, but this ranks him as the 16th-worst qualified hitter in baseball. Like I said, he's been really bad at the plate. The thing with Swanson is that offense has never been his calling card. Even at his absolute best, the Chicago Cubs’ shortstop has never been any more more than a slightly above-average hitter. His ability to play exceptional defense at a premium position like shortstop is what has made him one of the most valuable players in baseball throughout the course of the 2020s. Until last year, that is. Per Baseball Savant, Swanson was worth two runs above average in the field last season. That was his worst defensive season since 2019. What was different? Swanson went from being elite to merely good at coming in on the ball, while also falling from above average to below average at moving laterally: Year Coming In (OAA) Lateral toward 3B (OAA) Lateral toward 1B (OAA) Going Back (OAA) 2024 14 2 2 -1 2025 9 -1 -2 -1 The values in the table represent the outs above average on each respective play type. At his defensive peak from 2022 to 2023, Swanson was not only elite at coming in on the ball, but also at moving towards third base: he was worth 12 outs above average moving towards third in 2022, and eight in 2023. This declined significantly in 2024, and all but disappeared in 2025. This year, though, he has been worth four outs above average moving toward third base and we’re only halfway through the season. To put this in simpler terms: he is making more plays in the hole between him and third base than he was last year: TDZObzlfWGw0TUFRPT1fQWdVRkFsTlJWd0FBV2dZQ1VnQUhCZ0JlQUFCUkFBTUFVRllEVmdaV0IxZGRWUUlG.mp4 The former Atlanta Brave has also been worth 0 outs above average on plays towards first base, an improvement over his below-average output in 2025. He’s also maintained a steady performance coming in on the ball, worth five outs above average in that regard. Cobble all of that together and Swanson has been worth seven runs above average and nine outs above average in the field so far this year, both of which are seventh in baseball. This is after being worth two runs above average and four outs above average just last season. Despite being one of the worst qualified hitters in baseball, he has still posted 1.5 fWAR, fifth among the Cubs’ position players and more than Alex Bregman, Nico Hoerner, and Carson Kelly. He is on pace for 3.2 fWAR after posting 3.3 last season. Is this all a glass half full view of Dansby Swanson? Of course it is! But we all need that right now while we stress about the bat. He might never be more than a shell of his former self at the plate again. However, at the age of 32, he might also be as good as ever in the field. This alone will continue to make him a plug-and-play option for Craig Counsell moving forward. View full article

Image courtesy of © Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images I have written about this phenomenon before. Our brains are built to recognize patterns. Close your eyes and picture Nico Hoerner swinging at a pitch. In all likelihood, he is making contact with that pitch in your head, because almost every time he swings, he is making contact with that pitch. Except for when he doesn’t, and it leaves me very confused. I had another one of these moments this past week while watching Chicago Cubs highlights. I didn’t get to watch any of Thursday’s win over the Rockies live because of my full-time job, however, I did get to watch the condensed game. I was happy to see that Alex Bregman hit a home run, even if something about the highlight seemed odd to me: Breggy.mp4 Bregman has found success over his career with a very flat bat path, or as it is known on Baseball Savant, swing path tilt. He typically hits home runs on pitches middle up. With a flat bat path and short swing, Bregman has an easier time getting to those pitches and driving them in the air to the pull side of the field for home runs. It’s incredibly rare to see him go down and get a ball that is that low and power it over the fence. That is usually reserved for hitters with a steeper bat path, like Mike Trout, for example. In fact, according to Baseball Savant, that pitch was the fourth-lowest pitch he has ever hit for a home run, and two of the three examples that were lower were from 2017. That long ball was very much something we haven’t seen very often, and certainly not in more recent memory. We can see that on this chart showing every home run of Bregman’s career. That tiny little bottom right-most blue hex is where the home run against the Rockies was: So, what does this mean going forward? The former Astro has been served a steady diet of breaking balls to this point in the season: 40.2 percent of his pitches seen have been some form of breaking ball. That is the highest mark of his career, and is up from 31.3 percent last season. This has come at the expense of fastballs. Only 50.4 percent of the pitches he has seen have been fastballs, which is down from 57.1 percent last season, and is also the lowest mark of his career. I assume you already know this, since you’re willingly reading an article about baseball, but just in case: When a pitcher throws a breaking ball, they typically want it to end up down in the zone. More breaking balls means more pitches down in the zone, and less pitches up and out over the plate where Bregman prefers them. Pitchers have profited from this strategy, as Bregman is slugging just .281 on breaking balls. Using the new swing timing data at Baseball Savant, we can see that he is way early on breaking balls more often than he was in 2024, when he slugged .479 on those pitches: In 2024, which is in orange, he was on time much more often, which is that big peak in the middle. In 2026, which is in blue, we can see a large blue section that peaks out from behind the orange on the far right. That is bad. Those are the swings where Bregman is disastrously early. This is what that looks like: Breggy 2.mp4 The new Cub said as much himself, telling Patrick Mooney “I am out in front on soft and late on fastballs.” This would certainly back that up. Last week, our own Randy Holt did a deep dive on Bregman, and ultimately concluded he was being way too patient and needed to try to jump at pitches out over the plate more often. That, most certainly, is a solution to this problem. On Thursday, he simply decided to just go down and get the pitch that was thrown to him. If he wants to start doing that instead, that could also work. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images I don’t know about you, but I woke up on Friday with a new sense of vigor around the Chicago Cubs. I am not really a believer in momentum when it comes to sports. At the same time, Thursday was a massive come-from-behind win for the struggling club. Edward Cabrera was set to return on Friday to fortify a starting rotation badly in need of reinforcements. Plus, the Giants, one of the worst teams in baseball, were coming in to play three games at Wrigley Field. This was the perfect storm to right the ship. It didn’t take long for that vigor to disappear. A rain delay, coupled with the Giants immediately taking a 2-0 lead, put a small dent in my psyche. Then, a Matt Chapman grand slam in the fourth inning completely obliterated my excitement, and suddenly, I found myself watching college baseball instead. Cabrera, who was returning from a stint on the injured list with a blister, ended up with his worst line as a Cub: 3.2 innings pitched and eight earned runs given up on eight hits and three home runs. I am not going to sit here and tell you that Cabrera was actually good in this game. What I will do is give you a “the glass is one percent full” spin on the matter. The right hander’s strikeout rate on the day was 30 percent, and that is his single highest strikeout rate in any game this season. Where did those extra strikeouts come from? Well, for one, his velocity was up considerably from where it has been all season. All stats via FanGraphs: Fastball Velocity Sinker Velocity Slider Velocity Curveball Velocity Changeup Velocity Season Average (Before IL stint) 95.7 mph 95.9 mph 88.5 mph 84.5 mph 92.6 mph 6/5 vs. Giants 97.3 mph 96.9 mph 90.4 mph 86.5 mph 93.8 mph That is a full one or two ticks on every pitch that Cabrera throws. His Stuff+ ratings, which measure the physical characteristics of a pitch, increased accordingly. For this start, his Stuff+ rating of 99 was bested only by his April 28 start earlier this season. This is what makes Cabrera so tantalizing. When he is on, he is getting Matt Chapman to swing through a beautifully executed slider: cabrera.mp4 And following that up with a changeup that breaks the opposite direction from the slider: cabrera 1.mp4 So, what was Cabrera’s issue on Friday? According to FanGraphs, he threw first pitch strikes on just 35 percent of his plate appearances. That’s his lowest rate this season by over 10 percentage points. Prior to Friday’s start, hitters were slugging .493 on pitches from Cabrera in the strike zone, per Baseball Savant. Over 14 percent of those balls in play were barreled, i.e. balls that were hit with an ideal combination of exit velocity and launch angle. On Friday? Hitters slugged 1.286 on pitches in the zone and 27.3 percent of those balls in play were barreled. Cabrera simply was falling behind way too many hitters, and when he came into the zone, they were ready for it. If we’re looking for a bright side, and we all know that we desperately need it, I’d say that it’s clear Cabrera is healthy. The increased velocity says to me that he is feeling no ill effects from his blister. Still, he was acquired to be better than this. Whether it’s because he was falling behind hitters or not, he has to get better results when he pitches in the strike zone. The stuff is there. The results, like everything else for the Cubs right now, really lagged behind on Friday. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jeff Le-Imagn Images Believe it or not, there were some bright spots in what was a really ugly month of May for the Chicago Cubs. A 13-16 record yielded a lot of questions about the offense, and it was that offensive underperformance that perhaps allowed the pitching to slip under the radar a little bit. To be clear, the offense wasn’t great, but a 4.42 ERA for the team sure didn’t help matters either. With that out of the way, though, let’s revel in those aforementioned bright spots for a bit and take a look at the pitchers of the month for May of 2026. 3. Ethan Roberts: 9 G, 2.03 ERA, 13.1 IP, 7 BB, 10 K I love any baseball player that is a little bit different. At 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, Roberts doesn't look like a typical professional pitcher. The 19.6% strikeout rate in the month of May would support that he simply is not the typical professional pitcher. Roberts has always walked a tightrope from atop the rubber. Not striking a lot of guys out means that you have to manage contact really well. After having been a fly ball pitcher for most of his first few brief seasons in the majors, Roberts has suddenly turned into a ground-ball machine, with a ground-ball rate of 64.7% in May, according to FanGraphs. This is after never posting a ground-ball rate above 36.4% in any full season in his career. He won’t maintain a .235 batting average on balls in play. Nobody does. We already saw some of that come back to earth in his outing Sunday against the Cardinals, when a bloop double found grass and denied him what could have been a big escape from a jam. But if the ground-ball rate remains that high, he just might be able to remain a viable option in the bullpen. The Cubs really need it. 2. Jacob Webb: 12 G, 0.64 ERA, 14 IP, 3 BB, 19 K Matthew Trueblood wrote about Webb here at Northside Baseball just last week. He concluded that Webb has dialed in the location on his changeup, which has unlocked him as a relief ace for the Cubs. Webb’s numbers in May certainly support this. According to Baseball Savant, hitters slugged .611 against his changeup in March and April. They had a 30% hard hit rate (a ball hit with an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher), and they whiffed on 42.9% of their swings. In May, hitters slugged just .167 to go along with a hard hit rate of 15.4%, and a whiff rate of 52.7%. That’ll certainly contribute to a month where a pitcher strikes out 19 guys and walks only three. 1. Ben Brown: 7 G, 1.86 ERA, 29 IP, 8 BB, 31 K A lot has been written about Brown at Northside Baseball as well, and for good reason: he is one of the only good things going for the Cubs at the moment. He was inserted into the rotation out of necessity on May 8, and has responded by being the team’s best starting pitcher for the month ,by a mile. Jeremy Tecktiel recently wrote about how Brown’s new sinker has turned him into a ground ball pitcher. Similar to Roberts, that is a huge development for Brown, especially given he has managed to continue to strike hitters out at an above average rate. Since we’ve written about the sinker, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge Brown’s changeup, which was thrown 4% of the time in March and April, and increased to 8.8% in May, per Baseball Savant. Hitters hit just .111 and slugged .222 against the pitch in May, while whiffing on 46.7% of swings. It’s been more than just a “third time through the order pitch,” too. Here he is fooling Brandon Nimmo with a perfect changeup on just the second pitch of a start in Texas: NXk5Z1BfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUFaVlVsTlNWd2NBWGxNQUJ3QUhCZzlYQUZrQ1ZBQUFBbFVHVWxWUkIxVUVWQWRU.mp4 It’s been a long time coming for Brown, and it finally seems to be coming together. With all of the injuries the pitching staff has dealt with so far this year, the timing couldn’t have been better for the Cubs. Congrats to Ben Brown on being the Cubs’ pitcher of the month for May. They might need him to win this quasi-award again in June. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images To put it mildly, the Chicago Cubs are struggling right now. A losing streak is never a good thing, and it feels so much worse when three of those losses come at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers. The very same Brewers that have won the division in each of the past three seasons. The very same Brewers that the Cubs have been trying to chase down for most of the last eight seasons, despite the Cubs having significantly more financial resources. Let’s not kid ourselves, the Cubs made moves this past offseason with the specific intent to finally unseat Milwaukee in the National League Central. That is what makes this all so painful, as our own Matthew Trueblood wrote earlier this week: the Cubs are all in on this season. The Brewers are not. Yet they still completely outclassed the Cubs in their first meeting of the season. One of those offseason moves that the Cubs made was trading for Edward Cabrera. While he has been fine in his first 10 starts for the Cubs, he has been far from spectacular, and even pretty far from the pitcher he was just last season. The Brewers, on the other hand, traded for Kyle Harrison, who matched up against Cabrera and the Cubs on Wednesday night. As you’re likely aware, Harrison earned the win after he threw seven shutout innings, allowed only two hits and one walk, and struck out 11 Cubs. Cabrera, oppositely, was removed from the game in the fourth inning with a blister after allowing four runs (one earned) over three innings. Something about those two, specifically, going up against each other, and Harrison emphatically besting Cabrera, felt significant. There’s beating your opponent. Then there’s running up the score. Unfortunately, if you zoom out and compare the full-season stats for these two starters, Wednesday night’s result shouldn’t be all that surprising: Player Innings Pitched ERA FIP K% fWAR Edward Cabrera 54 4.00 4.44 20.7% 0.4 Kyle Harrison 45.2 1.77 2.48 32.3% 1.5 The Brewers acquired Harrison for a package centered around third-baseman Caleb Durbin. It feels like the Cubs absolutely could have offered something similar, centered around Matt Shaw. However, I am not nearly naive enough to suggest that Harrison would be this effective if he were on the Cubs. This isn’t about Harrison vs. Cabrera. It’s about the Cubs vs. the Brewers. If these two pitchers switched teams, I have no doubt that Cabrera would be better off for it, and Harrison would be worse off. That is what really hurts. This is the case of two teams identifying pitchers that they liked and that had potential that they thought they could maximize. Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic reported that the Cubs had been “enamored” with Cabrera’s potential for a while. So far, that fascination is looking a bit misplaced. There’s still plenty of time for these wrongs to be righted. Cabrera is under team control through the 2028 season. Harrison is under team control through the 2030 season. It’s plenty early in either player’s tenure with his new team. Still, Wednesday night just felt like the Brewers were running victory laps around the Cubs. Not only have they resumed their rightful place atop the National League Central, but they’re doing it partially on the back of a pitcher that they targeted and is now one of the best pitchers in baseball. The guy that the Cubs targeted and went out and got has a 5.79 ERA in May. The Cubs continue to try to catch the Brewers. The Brewers continue to prove that they are simply light years ahead of the Cubs. Is anyone even remotely surprised? View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Much was said over the offseason about the Chicago Cubs adding more strikeouts to their pitching staff. A lot of this even came from president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer himself: “I felt like we had a very contact oriented pitching staff. Our defense helps that, but, you know, we don’t have that kind of stuff in our rotation other than Cade Horton,” Hoyer said on The Show podcast about the acquisition of Edward Cabrera. We’re now officially about one month into the season, and I hate to tell you this, but the pitching staff is the same as it ever was. Year ERA FIP K% 2025 3.81 4.16 21.4% 2026 3.79 4.16 21.8% I promise, I quadruple-checked those numbers to make sure I wasn’t mixing my years up when creating that table, because having the same FIP seems like an astronomically crazy coincidence. What’s the difference between those two pitching staffs? Nothing. As Pam Beesly says in The Office, they’re the same picture. Or, in our case, they’re the same pitchers. The thing is, they’re not the same pitchers. Matthew Boyd and Shota Imanaga are both, suddenly, strikeout machines. Some of that is probably offset by the loss of Cade Horton, Daniel Palencia, Hunter Harvey, and Phil Maton to injury, though the latter three will be back eventually. The team’s biggest addition, Cabrera, has certainly contributed to the respectable ERA and FIP that the pitching staff is posting. Despite this, his strikeout numbers are down, and they are down considerably. After striking out 25.8 percent of hitters last year, the righty is now striking out just 18.5 percent of hitters. He has gone from the 74th percentile to the 28th. Last season, Cabrera struck out 24.4 percent of left-handed hitters, and 27.5 percent of right-handed hitters. This season, he is still striking out righties at an elite rate of 28.6 percent. It’s his strikeout rate against lefties that has really plummeted, all the way down to a paltry 11.4 percent. The Dominican pitcher attacks lefties with, primarily, his changeup, while also sprinkling in a healthy bit of his four-seam fastball, sinker, and curveball. He likes to get outs with the curve, and typically, he is very successful in doing so. Per Baseball Savant, 90 pitchers threw at least 100 curveballs to left-handed hitters last season. Hitters swung and missed with 48.5 percent of their swings against Cabrera’s curveball, which was seventh among that group of pitchers. This year, though, the story is different. In 2026, 74 pitchers have thrown at least 25 curveballs to lefties. Cabrera now has the third-lowest whiff rate on those pitchers at 11.8 percent. To begin to understand what is wrong with the curveball, let’s take a look at where Cabrera is throwing the pitch. The chart on the left is a heat map for all of his curveballs thrown to lefties last year, while the one on the right is all of them thrown to lefties this season. Charts are courtesy of FanGraphs Labs: Cabrera is suddenly burying a whole lot of curveballs down near the back foot of left-handed hitters. In fact, he has thrown 22 two-strike curveballs to lefties in 2026. Six of them have been thrown to the back foot of the hitter. He only did that 10 times all of last season. For better context: Last season, 8.8 percent of his two-strike curves to lefties were thrown that far low and in. In 2026, he is doing it 27.3 percent of the time, or about three times more often. That is a really difficult place to get swings and misses. Perhaps one reason for the struggle in commanding the curveball; the former Marlin is seeing a pretty significant change in movement on a lot of his pitches to this point in 2026, namely his four-seam fastball and his curve. Between those two pitches, though, the breaking ball really stands out considering its drop in performance. Year Curveball Vertical Drop Curveball Horizontal Break 2025 50.0” 10.9” to the glove-side 2026 45.9” 7.1” to the glove-side This might not seem like a big difference, however, it is the difference between this pitch to Nolan Schanuel from a month ago that started at his knees and inside and only broke further down and more inside: Cabrera 1.mp4 ... and this pitch to Yoan Moncada last May in a game in which he struck out 10 Angels and allowed no runs in 5.2 innings: Cabrera 2.mp4 By starting the pitch that much higher and that much more over the plate, it looks like a strike for longer, and thus, Cabrera is much more likely to get those whiffs that Jed Hoyer so covets. Also note where the pitch to Moncada finishes relative to where the pitch to Schanuel finished. The pitch to Moncada, while very much out of the strike zone, was at least in the same zip code. The pitch to Schanuel almost hit him in the foot, and you don’t often induce swings that way, no matter how nasty the pitch is. It’s important to note that the sky is not falling here. Cabrera has a 2.73 ERA and a 3.66 FIP to this point. He’s just getting there in a radically different way than we all imagined, and if it continues, we’re probably about a month or so away from teams stacking their lineup with left-handed hitters when he takes the bump. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images Since Seiya Suzuki’s return from injury on April 10, the Chicago Cubs’ offense has started to figure things out. Heading into action on that day, the North Siders had a 95 wRC+, according to FanGraphs, meaning that the offense was five percent worse than the league average. Since then, they've hit to the tune of a 136 wRC+. Of course, both the 'before' and the 'after' here are small samples, and this jump is not entirely (indeed, not even mostly) due to Suzuki’s presence. The Japanese outfielder has logged just one extra-base hit since returning, though he's still cobbled together a respectable 94 wRC+. That extra-base hit was this double from the game against the Mets on Friday: WERaNVhfWGw0TUFRPT1fQlZWVVZnQUhVMU1BQ1ZWVFVnQUhBZ0ZYQUZoUUJsVUFCMU5YVlFJREExY0RDRllB.mp4 We’ll all take that result—Suzuki included. Doubles don’t grow on trees. However, a double into the right-field corner is not the Seiya Suzuki we’re all used to seeing. Last season, he managed just six extra-base hits to the opposite field, according to Baseball Savant. None of them looked like that thing. Four of them were to right-center, really. One was a fly ball in West Sacramento last March that just kept carrying over a short wall in the corner. The other was this... thing. NXkyNDFfWGw0TUFRPT1fRDFjRFhRVUVVRlFBRGdSV1ZnQUhVZ0pmQUZnR1dnQUFDMXhYQmxaWENWRlZDQW9G.mp4 Hitting the ball hard has never been an issue for Suzuki. His average exit velocity has been in the top half of baseball every season since he came over from Japan, and in the top quarter for each of the past three seasons. While it's down so far this year, I'm not concerned about that rebounding some time soon. Suzuki broke out two seasons ago, and turned in a career high in home runs last season—when he started hitting more of those hard-hit balls in the air to the pull side of the field instead of on the ground, or to straightaway center field: Year Ground Ball % Fly Ball % Pull Air % Straight Air % 2022 40.7% 25.5% 9.7% 22.8% 2023 43.6% 24.0% 14.8% 24.2% 2024 33.7% 34.0% 15.2% 32.0% 2025 31.8% 34.7% 24.3% 24.8% The one extra-base hit that Suzuki has managed isn’t overwhelmingly concerning by itself, even if it is to the opposite field. Again, any extra-base hit is a good one. It's concerning that it is the only one, though, and it's indicative of the overall issue for the slugger so far this season: he has only pulled one ball in the air so far. That, alone, explains the complete lack of slug. Last season, hitters slugged 1.338 on fly balls to the pull side, and just .284 on fly balls to the opposite field. So how has he managed not to be an abject disaster at the plate? A 14.6% walk rate has yielded a .366 on-base percentage, which will do the trick. He still rarely chases, which is good. His approach doesn’t appear to have changed much. He did admit to Craig Counsell that the strike zone is a little "fuzzy" to him, though, according to the Cubs' broadcast team, and his swing reflects that struggle to see it well. When you have a guy who can’t pull the ball, that usually means there is a timing issue. This makes sense for a guy who had the start of his season derailed by an injury. Suzuki is playing like a guy who's still preparing for Opening Day. Let’s hope he starts to warm up soon. View full article