\u201cWe have not had a meeting and said swing less, by any stretch of the imagination,\u201d Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. \u201cIf there\u2019s one guy that trumpets swing less, it\u2019s Bregman. Are guys hearing it? I don\u2019t know if I have a good answer. We have some pretty established people who probably aren\u2019t changing too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
But some are.<\/p>\n
With the season nearly 20 percent complete, second baseman Nico Hoerner and shortstop Dansby Swanson entered Thursday with their in-zone swing rates down more than 10 percent. Center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong was down nearly 10 percent, though he hadn\u2019t solved his biggest problem. His 44.7 chase rate was a career high and the fifth highest in the league.<\/p>\n
First baseman Michael Busch\u2019s in-zone rate also was down, but not to the same extent as those three. Right fielder Seiya Suzuki and left fielder Ian Happ were at roughly last year\u2019s levels. And then there was Bregman, whose in-zone rate was a career-low, whose chase rate was its lowest since 2022 and overall swing rate was its lowest for a full season since 2019.<\/p>\n
Bregman, who joined the Cubs this season on a five-year, $175 million free-agent contract, makes a concentrated effort to swing only at pitches on which he can do damage. If he gets too aggressive, his knack for making contact on pitches outside the zone leads to too many easy outs.<\/p>\n
Hoerner is also a high-contact type, but Counsell said emphatically, \u201cI can tell you Nico\u2019s change is not a result of Alex Bregman.\u201d Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly said the team has spent four years trying to get Hoerner to be the hitter he was in the latter part of last season and the first month of this one \u2013 more selective, but taking chances when ahead in the count and pulling the ball in the air.<\/p>\n
Including last year\u2019s playoffs, Hoerner batted .341 with an .859 OPS after Aug. 20. This season, he is batting .291 with an .819 OPS. His swing rate is at a career low. His pull rates and flyball rates are at career highs. And his ground ball rate is down more than 10 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a player who makes a lot of contact, it\u2019s a skill set, it\u2019s a bonus. But it\u2019s also something that can limit me if it\u2019s weak contact in good counts to hit,\u201d Hoerner said. \u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve known for a long time. I obviously know hitting the ball hard off the ground is better. It takes a while to understand how that shows up for you individually. I definitely don\u2019t have that down yet. But I have a better idea of pitches I hit well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Said Counsell, \u201cThere are mechanical things you can go into. But the easiest way to describe is that Nico could get into the habit of just playing defense as a hitter. He\u2019s great at it, which means the ball is going to be in play. But it kind of created a swing that didn\u2019t let him drive the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has always had the move to drive the baseball. He\u2019s just gotten more confident in this move he has worked on trusting and understands both things can still happen. He can still make elite contact and drive the baseball because his move is cleaner. He\u2019s behind the baseball. He can get underneath the baseball instead of kind of just diving forward and putting it in play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swanson, batting .214 but has a .783 OPS that includes a nearly 10 percent increase in his walk rate, made his own changes before Bregman\u2019s arrival. During the offseason, he determined that he wanted to be more athletic in the box, the way he was earlier in his career, and not so worried about mechanics and drills.<\/p>\n
He, too, is swinging much less, but there\u2019s a danger in showing too much discipline. Happ, when informed of the teamwide trend, warned it can lead \u201cto a pretty passive approach,\u201d and hitters getting behind in counts. Kelly actually noticed that happening with the Cubs early in the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeams catch onto that. Pitchers catch onto that. Our first-pitch swing numbers were a little low,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cWe weren\u2019t as aggressive with runners in scoring position. It\u2019s not anything I had a meeting about. But in conversations with hitters, I\u2019ll talk to them about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelly likes that his group is selective, as evidenced by its walk rate, which, entering Thursday, was the third highest in the league. The Cubs aren\u2019t exit-velocity monsters. Their average EV ranks near the bottom third in the league. Their 90th percentile exit velocity \u2013 a measure of how hard hitters hit their best-struck balls \u2013 is near the bottom<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those numbers would be even lower if not for the emergence of rookie DH\/catcher Mois\u00e9s Ballesteros. Kelly said Ballesteros possesses an \u201cincredible sense of timing in the batter\u2019s box,\u201d innate rhythm and flow, and a bat path that enables him to hit the ball hard all over the field.<\/p>\n
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