Rebooting Matt Shaw Worked Perfectly For The Cubs
Giving an unproven prospect like Matt Shaw the third base job out of spring training was originally a disaster for the Chicago Cubs. After retooling his swing back in the minors, he looks like a stud after all.
In five games since getting recalled, Shaw has eight hits and a walk in 20 plate appearances, including five doubles. That's a .421/.450/.684 batting line, albeit in a limited sample, and it has the Cubs encouraged that they made the right call to entrust their third base job to him in the first place—and another correct decision to send him back to Iowa for a month to figure things out.
Shaw was the 13th overall pick in the 2023 draft out of the University of Maryland. He obliterated pitching at every level of the minors in his first year and a half as a professional, and he was ranked the 19th-best prospect in baseball before this season by MLB.com.
The Cubs had enough faith in his abilities that they traded the third basemen above and below him on the depth chart this offseason. They sent incumbent starter Isaac Paredes and 2024 first-round pick Cam Smith to the Houston Astros in exchange for Kyle Tucker. They passed on the opportunity to add competition at the position after the trade, essentially handing the job to Shaw.
He made his major-league debut on Opening Day when the Cubs took on the Los Angeles Dodgers in Tokyo. He struggled greatly over the first three weeks of the season, batting .172/.294/.241 with one home run through April 14 when the Cubs sent him back Triple-A.
There were several red flags in his batting metrics at that point. His average exit velocity of 82.7 mph was nearly the lowest in MLB, as he was taking a lot of bad hacks with low bat speed just to make contact. His contact rate on pitches in the strike zone was uncharacteristically low, and he was making too many weak outs on pitches outside of the zone.
A mechanical flaw appears to have been the culprit for his problems, and the Cubs worked with him to tone down his leg kick in Triple-A. It worked almost immediately, as evidenced by his .286/.409/.560 batting line in 24 games with Iowa, including six home runs.
While Shaw has only been back in Chicago for less than a week, it appears he brought his successful new approach with him. He's a welcome addition to the Cubs lineup. Even though they're in first place in the National League Central with a 31-20 record, they haven't gotten much production from his replacements at third base. They've tried Jon Berti, Vidal Bruján, Nicky Lopez, and Gage Workman. Combined, those four players have a .206/.270/.246 slash line with no home runs over 137 plate appearances.
If the last five games are any indication, the Matt Shaw should have a tight grip on third base in the Cubs lineup, not just for this season, but for several years to come. That was the original plan at the beginning of the year, and it just took a brief reboot to get back on track.
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