I just finished editing and uploading the Monday Morning Cubs Show today with Mahoney. It should be available any minute now.
In the meantime I wanted to bring up a solid talking point from today’s discussion and that’s whether or not Matt Shaw is the 3rd baseman for the rest of the season. Ball or Strike?
I said 80% strike for most but there’s a 20% chance he’s not, and I’d say it’s entirely attitude and presence. That’s why it was easy for him to go back to Iowa and surrender ourselves to Jon Berti. Not that Matt Shaw isn’t clearly the most talented 3rd baseman in the org right now, but he just didn’t know it and that can be measured by his actions. He looked lost and that’s me being nice. For a widely-acknowledged strong and confident presence, Matt Shaw looked more like an awkward freshman on the high school varsity team at a small southern school enrollment under 200.
It was not good/very bad.
Now I would imagine Shaw is more aggressive in all respects. He needs to be charging balls in the field. He needs to make more aggressive throws instead of being nervous. And he needs to swing the batt earlier in the count instead of trying to be Juan Soto. You have to hit first to draw your walks and he never established the bat first. So that needs to happen.
Here’s the good things.
Jed Hoyer gives himself a solid 6 weeks evaluation window to understand if we need a better 3rd baseman at the trade deadline and I love that.
Even if he’s not entirely ready to hit is potential. Jed will have enough time to watch him on a playoff team to decide if we really need a Ryan McMahon or somebody else. Personally I think Shaw can easily hit that bar but I would rather see it for myself first. So again, good shit from Jed.
Overall, this gives us the best lineup of the year so far. No doubt he’s a better option right now than the other guys. The one caveat would be if it’s in Matt Shaw’s best development interests and I could argue that either way. Either way the team comes first and this lineup rocks with him hitting 9th.
Next up is getting Ian Happ back and then we have an awkward decision to make on the active roster for the first time of the season.
We talk about it this week on the Monday Morning Cubs Show which should be uploaded any minute now.