This is the Cubs on Tuesday podcast Welcome Back.

Today's episode will be about Matt Shaw.

It's going to be broken up into two different parts.

The first part, we're gonna highlight exactly what Matt Shaw did throughout the year from the first half to the second half.

That includes batting mechanical changes, batting stance changes, how that manifested in some of the underlying data.

We're talking bat path, we're talking bat speed, point of contact.

All you can imagine we're going to be talking about in the first half of this episode.

Then in the second half of this episode, we're going to use that first half as a foundation to highlight how the Cubs might proceed with his projection in twenty twenty six, especially when this offseason ramps up and maybe there's some trade talks going on.

Maybe Matshaw's name comes up in some trade discussions and the Cubs might be seriously considering them, especially if they are intent on revisiting some of the Alex Bregman rumors.

I mean, they were pretty close to signing Bregman.

Jed Hoyer even got the approval from ownership to make that deal last offseason.

Ultimately, by the time the twentieth minute marker hits on this episode, I hope you can understand how he changed throughout the offseason.

And as always, this is in the lens of like public data, so we're gonna get as deep as we can, but there's nuance, there's stuff that we can't capture, and frankly only the coaches in Shaw himself can describe in more detail.

But we're going to do our absolute best here and get right into it.

There were a lot of questions about Shaw and entering the season, first and foremost, could he play defense at third base?

The answer to that was an astounding yes, and in fact exceeded my expectations.

It sounds like it exceeded at Hoyer's expectations, and he finishes one of the best defenders in the league from a runs saved perspective, might even win a go Glove, which is really impressive consider that there are questions about his defensive competency in the middle of March and we're talking seven months later about him being a Rawlings Gold Glove finalist.

What a trajectory from a defensive standpoint alone.

The offense did not follow that smooth of a transition period for show at the big league level.

In the first half, he batted just one ninety eight, he had only two home runs, and his WRC plus was sixty.

He was one of the worst offensive contributors in Major League Baseball entering that All Star break.

Let's talk about what he looked liked during that time.

When he made his debut in Japan and had his first big league hit, A few things jumped at you visually.

Number one, he had a really inverted front foot and the battey stance was super close.

For my age, you grew up with the likes of Edgar Renturia.

Edgarnia had a super close stance and in some respects not a you know, apples to apples comparison, but they both had the same degree of closed stance.

Now, the difference between Rentrehea and Shaw was that Shaw had this massive leg kick to go with it.

So he has this rigid posture, this inverted front foot, this deep stance, and this huge leg kick.

Again from my era growing up, it was a combination.

Are you ready for this of Alexei Ramirez with the inverted front foot, Matt Holliday with the leg kick, and Edgar Renturrehea with the closed stance.

Those are the three names that come to mind.

It was rough going for Shaw in that first week.

This is what you look like from March eighteenth to April eleventh, he gets sent back down and for the next four weeks when he's in Iowa, you don't really see many changes up until like a few days he was promoted or called back up to the big league level.

And within the few days from his recall on May nineteenth, then you started to see a little bit less inversion with that front foot.

Also, the batty's dance became a little bit more upright, the posture was less rigid.

That leg kick, that Matt Holliday esque leg kick, it was toned down.

Then the numbers for like a week started to look a little better, but ultimately it wasn't enough.

He started making more adjustments.

June twenty seventh was the next adjustment period.

So about a month after his recall, that inversion became no more.

You didn't see that front foot inversion.

It went from being very inverted to slightly less inverted to now not inverted.

He also here and there showed this toe tap and his bat started to rest on his shoulder, and so I'm thinking with a toe tap that either it's a mechanism timing wise, or it's a mechanism that is making him stay back on his backside where he might be leaking out front with that lextright.

I'm not sure that's a question you would want to ask the player.

Now.

That didn't last long.

On June twenty seventh, three weeks later, toe tap went away, the bat started to go back to eye level, and you started seeing the leg kick come back.

Sure enough.

That only lasted a week up until the All Star Game Yankee Stadium.

Then he had some time off and he didn't play.

So he takes the entire series off at Yankee Stadium, All Star break hits, He goes to his forts with his wife, He has a great time, takes a week off, comes back July eighteenth.

You're looking at a different guy.

You're looking at what is this an open stance?

His postures upright, a little bit more bet waggle, to his entire aura that's even more vertical.

Looks a lot different.

This is almost like the extreme opposite of what we saw when he debuted.

He went from Edgar Renteria closed stance ness with a Matt Holliday approach with the leg kick to an open stance, more upright and a little bit more bet waggle action to him and like almost look like Hobvey bias in twenty seventeen, Like a little bit open stance, looseness every now and then unloading.

I'm like, okay, that's kind of interesting.

Immediately immediately the power takes off.

So let's put this into context.

When he debuted with that inversion and closed stance, his attack angle was super flat.

Okay, so think about the bat traveling through his own super flat.

In fact, he was in the most flatted swing percentiles in the league.

When he comes back from Iowa, that flatness starts to trend towards being more steep.

But you don't see that steeper attack angle appear until after the All Star break or until after he opens up his batting stands and changes his posture.

He went to having a bad attack angle in the second half.

That reflected what you saw from pie Crow Armstrong, which is one of the more steeper bat paths.

Generally steeper batpass like in the seventy fifth percentile in the league.

That wasn't it, though, So keep following me here the attack angle became steeper the point of contact.

You can actually get data now on the point of contact, so you can go in and you can see, Okay, when the barrel meets the ball, how close is that ball to his center of mass?

Is he letting the ball travel and getting deeper?

You may if you play baseball, you hear this all the time.

Let it get deep, let it travel, Go up the middle, go hit the l screen, go to the opposite side, let it get deep.

Well, he was doing that when he debuted, and again he was among the select few batters in the league who let the ball travel extremely deep.

This was also a hitter of Shaw throughout his time in the minor leagues, where he went to the opposite field with frequency and with damage.

Make though nout about it, he hit the ball hard to the opposite field.

Well, that did not happen in the second half.

He was a completely different hitter.

So after he made those changes at the All Star break, we're talking again, open stance, looser posture.

Guess what happened.

He did not let that ball travel deeper.

He got out in front of it.

Specifically, the major league average for guys who hit the ball from their center of mass is around thirty inches in front of them.

Okay.

So if you take your belly button, you draw a horizontal line, you're about thirty inches in front of you.

Okay, that's the average contacts.

When he debuted, he was on twenty two inches.

He was letting that ball get deep.

In the second half, the majority of his points of contact were around thirty seven to thirty eight inches.

Say As Suzuki averaged this year at thirty six inches.

Say As Suzuki was among the group of hitters who let the ball not go deep getting out in front.

So Shaw completely changed how he not only attacked pitches in terms of having a steeper angle, but also where he made contact.

He was making contact with pitches at a depth out front, getting out front of the ball, similar to what you saw, say it Suzuki did.

Now, what about bat speed.

Everyone's talking about bat speed.

What about mats Shaw's batspeed?

Frankly, you didn't see much deviation throughout the entire year.

Now, granted, when he debuted it was a little bit lower than when he got called back up from Iowa in mid May, but it fluctuated and the bat speed was below league average.

But the attack angle and the contact point.

Those were the two most significant differences.

This is not me cherry picking.

This is not me going one by one.

There's a lot of different stack cast measurements you can look at, so of course I just asked my computer find me the most different ones, so you take every single one.

We did this with the pictures over the past few weeks.

Last week was SHOWDA.

I'm asking a question, Just give me the most different traits from all this, you know, dumb stack cast data.

And the number one difference was, of course, point of contact.

This aligns with what we saw right Now, close your eyes and think about all the home runs match ahead.

If you're really paying attention, most of those home runs were to the heavy polese side.

I'm talking heavy, heavy, heavy post side.

We're talking to the well at Wrigley Field.

Now, there are a few that you kind of left center, but most of his home runs were to the heavy pole side.

That means he's getting out front more.

That means the bat angle is steeper and he's letting it loose.

Now here's the encouraging part about Shaw.

If you're asked a question, well, is this sustainable?

Typically I would look at contact rate and chase rate.

So if I see huge deviations in contact rate where you don't see power, like let's say you're whiffy more in not hitting home runs, I would point to that as a red flag.

Likewise, if you see a huge sacrifice of power for contact, I would point to that as a red flag.

For Shaw's case, encouragingly, you saw a spike in power without much sacrifice in contact rate over time.

Let's put this in perspective.

So around the All Star break, his contact rate was around eighty five percent, really really good, right, It started to flatten out around eighty five percent, and then you're seeing once he makes those changes again open stance, that waggle, the whiffs go up, but not drastically.

That's why it's encouraging.

So throughout the majority of August and September he was only whiffing at like a twenty percent clip.

We we're talking contact rate around seventy five to eighty percent on a two week rolling basis.

That's pretty impressive for the power he put out, and it wasn't just in the form of making frequent contact was also in this selectivity, so he wasn't chasing much either.

Typically if you see like a power increase, it might be in the form of expanding your zone.

Look no further than Peter k Armstrong.

But when Shaw was hitting the ball further, the chases weren't extraordinarily bad.

I mean, he went from having a chase right around twenty five percent at the All Star break within that three week span upwards to just around thirty percent, and it started to go a little bit lower as September ended.

All in all, you're looking at a player who had eleven home runs, had a WRC plus of one thirty and a weighted on base average of three point fifty five in that second half.

He was one of the most significant offensive contributors for the Cubs and one of the main reasons why they stayed afloatt when Sea struggled and when Pete struggled and when Tucker was injured.

Like, Shaw's contributions in the second half were so huge in a major reason why they had that playoff series at Wrigley against the Padres.

Now, leading up to that series, he saw the offense start to dial it down.

You saw as ended, the offense did start to go down a little bit, But the batty mechanical changes, the foundational ones, the open stance, the batwaggle, et cetera, et cetera.

That didn't differ much, and maybe it was a matter of who they were facing, and you would have to imagine it was.

But he saw slightly fewer for teams in favor of sinkers and sliders, and that just might be again a matter of personalities facing and one reason why the offense went down a little bit.

But the overall takeaways are that the changes he made at the All Star Break directly resulted in eleven home runs, more power, a contact point out front like what you saw from sea, an attack angle like what you saw of Pete's, which was steep, not much change in that speed, and not sacrificing much contact or chase for that greater power output.

That is almost the ideal change you want to see a young rookie make.

You don't want to see these extreme sacrifices.

You don't want to see extreme sacrifices in power for contact that he did show when the season started in Japan upwards to when he was sent back down to Iowa.

You don't want to see those extremes persist.

It's part of the process.

But you don't want to see that last three, four or five months.

What Shaw did was what you want to see.

So now the question is, okay, well, can you expect that going forward in the second season.

Well, I think you should be encouraged by the changes he made.

It's a matter of how the league now at just right, and there's a degree of uncertainty with anyone who has not played much Major League baseball, especially in this day and age where pitchers are getting better faster than ever, And for a hitter like Shaw, who did undergo some significant changes, and he's not like the most cookie cutter hitter in the league.

He has some quirks.

He obviously had the close stance Edgar rend Rhea as quirk that went to a hobby bias open stance ness.

Right, that's a huge change, and it's fair to wonder, like if pictures do change how they pitched to him significantly, if what he's doing now is going to last in a vacuum.

I would say that any hitter who has Shaw's contact rate and power output over the long haul is successful.

So if you take his second half and you just only zoom in on those numbers over a large sample, that should equate to about league averaged above the average offense.

You don't see power output and contact not lead to that above average offense.

That is principally the main reason for optimism.

Now, there may come a point in the season, the offseason rather where you're looking at making confident improvements.

So we can be really confident about Shaw's changes he made, but can we be confident that it's going to lead to long term success, especially when you compare his profile to someone like Alex Brugman's, who the Cubs may want to spend money and lock up a profile of that amount of certainty.

Brugman is someone who has a lot of contact, moderate power, who's done this for six seven years, who can play third base right.

Shaw may come up in discussions for pitching, and you can improve your pitching volume that way.

I'm last saying I want to do this.

By the way, I'm just presenting one of the alternatives.

So could they end up looking to trade Shaw.

I got to tell you, with an offensive profile like what he showed in the second half and that defense, I think it's going to be difficult to as an executive come away not feeling a little uneasy about the ceiling of shop.

It's tough, Like I'm pausing there because I really don't know what the answer is.

You would like to see this, of course in like another half year sample, but you also may want to strike when the iron is hot and lock up a projectible hitter like Breuckman in a projectable valuable piece like what they've done for you know, Dance by Swanson, or having a low or rather a high ceiling guy locked up like even like jameson Tyona, who they're not paying much.

Right, you just know you can get value out of Bregman that you can then use other pieces to spread out and give value in a different way.

Overall, I'm fascinated what this means for Shaw's offseason and if he is which I honestly I expect he'll be back next year and he won't be traded.

I'm fascinated to see how it looks at spring training because Piekarl Armstrong when he came back from the last offseason.

Remember he had that second half success in twenty twenty four that boomed him to the immediate fast start that we saw in twenty twenty five.

Now, even though he had that success in twenty twenty four in the second half that came with Pete with alectkick that he just completely scrapped in twenty twenty five.

So I'm looking at Sean, I'm like, Okay, well, you made these changes, right, you have the success?

Is that going to last?

Like you're going to come back from the offseason with something different that you feel better about.

That's what I'm zoning in on.

And I wouldn't be surprised if we were talking about Shaw six months from now and he looks like another completely different hitter.

I really would not be surprised if that's the case.

And that leaves me just fascinated by his overall profile also too, I don't think you can ignore just like the mentality of Shaw is manifested in his defensive value.

I mean he's out there, first one out there from all the reports on the field and spring taking grinders.

He's worked with Dancy Swanson on the defense.

You saw the defensive value come up because of his hard work.

He is a big rat by every single definition of the book.

Those are the players personally I want to keep around.

I want to keep around the guys who are honest about what they need to improve in and just relentless in their work ethic with execution, and Shaw has done that over the past three months.

I still would like to see more of it, right, I'm a fan who likes certainty, you know, I acknowledge just the extremes of the changes may present some un certainty despite being optimistic in the underlying peripherals.

I'll leave it there.

Shall had an interest in season, a great second half.

It will be a fascinating offseason.

We'll do another player review next week.

Just to sum up, if you're talking about Matt shout with friends, what did you do differently?

The key traits are number one, open stance, close stance to open stance that led to a steeper bad angle, did not change bad speed.

It led to a point of contact that was more in front of him, more pulled balls, unsurprisingly, more power without significant sacrifices in contact or chase.

Overall, you would come away with this being very optimistic.

Talk to you next week.

Thank you for listening.

Go Cops.