Alex Bregman is taking accountability. The numbers say he should.
The Chicago Cubs third baseman went 0-for-5 with a strikeout on Sunday in a 2-1 extra-innings loss to the San Francisco Giants at Wrigley Field. The bat looked just as bad as it has looked all year, and after the game, Bregman did not try to dress it up.
“I’ve been terrible. I need to play better,” Bregman told reporters, per ESPN’s Jesse Rogers. “Offensively, it’s been awful. I’ve failed many times in this game. I’ve struggled. I’ve started slow before, I’ve started fast before. When you’re struggling, there is only one way forward and that’s straight, head-on through it.”
Then he got to the part that should worry everyone on the North Side. “Runners in scoring position, I’ve been god-awful. I need to be better. If I’m better over the last how many games, we probably win the majority of them.”
He is not exaggerating. Through 65 games, Bregman is batting .243 with 5 home runs, 19 RBIs, and an OPS under .670. His batting average drops to .173 with runners in scoring position. According to Underdog MLB, he leads the major leagues with 143 runners left stranded this season. That is not a slump. That is a player whose season is actively hurting his team.
The Cubs signed Bregman to a five-year, $175 million contract in January. The deal made sense at the time. Chicago needed a veteran middle-of-the-order presence to bridge the gap between their younger core and the next generation of position players. Bregman had two World Series rings, an MVP-caliber 2019, and a track record of being good in big games for Houston.
Two months in, the contract looks like a problem.
The Sunday at-bats tell the story. Bregman’s first three plate appearances led off three different innings. He saw nine total pitches across those at-bats and made three quick outs. His fourth at-bat came with runners on the corners and nobody out in the bottom of the eighth in a 1-1 game. He swung at the first pitch, which was well outside the strike zone, and hit a 68-mph weak liner that turned into a double play. Then he made the final out of the game with a popup to shortstop in the 10th.
That is not bad luck. That is bad approach.
The Cubs are above .500 and in striking distance of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central. They are good enough to contend. They are not good enough to carry a $35 million per year third baseman who is grounding into double plays in clutch spots.
The fix is not obvious. Bregman has been a contact-first hitter his entire career. He does not strike out a lot. He does not chase pitches at a high rate by traditional metrics. He just keeps making weak contact at exactly the wrong moments, and at age 32, the question of whether the bat speed is still there starts to matter.
Manager Craig Counsell has to keep running him out there because of the contract and because there is nobody better waiting in the wings. But the leash on the cleanup spot has to be getting shorter. Dropping Bregman to sixth or seventh in the lineup might be the next step.
For now, Bregman is saying all the right things. He is taking the blame, he is owning the at-bats, he is not making excuses. That gets you a week of grace from the Wrigley Field crowd. Maybe two.
After that, the boos are coming. The Cubs need their $175 million third baseman to be better. He just told everyone he agrees.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
