The Chicago Cubs have fallen into a pit of mediocracy since a red hot start to the 2025 campaign.
The offense has sputtered and failed and the pitching has been plagued by inconsistency. As a result, the team now finds itself 6 games behind the surging Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central Division.
Frustration is at an all-season high and scapegoats are being sought out everywhere.
But there are a few bright and shiny rays of positivity inside the Cubs’ dark cloud. Rookie third baseman Matt Shaw, who has become the Cubs’ top offensive asset since the All-Star break, is one of them.
The rise of Matt Shaw
Since the All-Star break, the 23-year-old Shaw is hitting .328 with 7 home runs, 15 RBIs and an OPS of 1.120. That 20-game surge places him among the best post-All-Star break hitters in all of baseball.
That’s a wild turnaround for someone who came into the break hitting .198 with an OPS of .556, who had already been sent down to the minors once and seemed on the verge of being sent down again.
Actually, there was lots of talk that the Cubs were keen on replacing him altogether, with rumors circulating that the team was actively hunting for third baseman prior to the trade deadline. Eugenio Suarez, Ke’Bryan Hayes, and Ryan McMahon were all tied to the Cubs’ possible decision to at least temporarily move on from the struggling Shaw.
Finding peace amid the pressure
But Shaw used the All-Star break to take a deep breath, reset, and gain some perspective while resting at his family’s lake house in upstate New York.
“I realized when I was sitting there that this is really peaceful,” Shaw told The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma. “This is what makes me happy. At the end of the day, if this is all I got, I’m going to be OK. That was really nice to remember.”
Shaw came back to baseball refreshed and focused on just playing the game, fine-tuning some batting mechanics along the way.
The end result has been success, as evidenced by the numbers he’s put up since then, including the two-run home run he hit in Sunday’s 3-2 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.
Brett Taylor of Bleacher Nation crunched the numbers detailing Shaw’s outstanding recent run:
“Since the break, Matt Shaw has hit .328/.349/.770/208 wRC+, with a 3.2% walk rate, a 19.0% K rate, a .310 BABIP, a .443(!) ISO, a 41.7% groundball rate, a 34.7% hard hit rate, and a 10.2% barrel rate. You can probably see some of the seams there in the underlying metrics, but it’s unquestionable that he’s been *much* better than he was earlier this year, and he has clearly deserved *a great deal* of the successful results…The biggest differences are the most obvious: he’s pulling hard fly balls. That’s it. That’s the thing. His fly ball rate is up to 43.8% after the break (35.0% before), and his pull rate is up to a whopping 51.0% (31.7% before).”
The Chicago Cubs have the third base asset they hoped for
“I think we should all be really proud of what Matt’s done this year,” manager Craig Counsell told The Athletic. “He was hit in the face in the big leagues, (you see) how tough it is to be a hitter in the big leagues and survived it.
“The resiliency to continue to search for and know success is in there is an important trait. One you need to be successful. He’s done that. You don’t get defeated and beat, you just keep coming to work to try to find better answers. I think Matt’s continued to do that no matter what’s going on. It’s a sign of a good player. Now, some of the offensive talent that we all knew was in there is starting to come out a little more.”
It should be noted that Shaw is still a rookie and still comparatively young to the game. He will get colder and he will have to re-find himself. This is common for all young players.
But he seems to have found the missing piece to the puzzle– the ability to deal with the stress and pressure of big league life and just focus on playing.
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