I don’t want to make a huge deal out of this, and like I said to start the day – I’m coming off a really bad quesadilla last night. So spare me some grace as I destroy my downstairs half bath and battle through these blogs. I may not have the same 1,000 words on Matt Shaw’s 3rd base play as normal.
The most important thing is that I had severe questions about how he’d feel for me at 3rd base. I know he can look good for a minute or a couple plays or be decent enough to distract me. That happened plenty with Christopher Morel out of the gate and still happens frequently with Seiya Suzuki.
My point here though is that Shaw looks and feels significantly smoother than I had imagined and this is just one of those moments you have to log for confidence purposes. It’s one small play but it rounds out the way I think about his 3rd base play.
He’s going to be weak to his back hand and that’s because he doesn’t have elite arm strength. So he’ll have to play closer to the 3rd base line and probably deeper than normal so he can come in on balls with momentum. That means Dansby Swanson would traditionally have more room to cover, but I think Shaw should be well above average going to his left. So there’s a natural compromise with him hugging a line to take away the backhand.
Another nice thing is that Dansby is better to his backhand than he is going up the middle. So he can play maybe a full step closer to home plate, or a step closer to 2nd base, because Matt Shaw has that much range going left and coming in on the ball. So balls between short and 3rd should be in Shaw’s wheelhouse, and I think he has the extra step of quickness to offset the fact that he should be playing half-step closer to the 3rd base line.
Is this making sense?
It matters because the Cubs pitching staff doesn’t log a ton of strikeouts. They pitch to contact and put the ball in play and rely on a tier-1 MLB defense.
I think Matt Shaw fits into it well enough to start the season, and I would expect him to get better month-to-month and obviously throughout his career. It would be shocking if he took steps backwards.
Anyways it’s important to remember he’s not going to Tokyo and neither is Ian Happ and that kinda bothers me a lot. But that’s the nature of 162 games and the wear it puts on the body. You can’t be rushing your quick twitch infielders into a trip across the world to likely get shutout by the Tokyo Dodgers.
But in the meantime, I’m enjoying what I see on defense.
Reminds me a lot of Alex Bregman.