Alex Bregman Looks Like Completely Different Hitter After Identifying Subtle Fix

What if I told you the Cubs had the second-best third baseman in the National League and fifth-best overall, at least according to fWAR? That’s a little easier to believe after the last several games, but few could have been convinced of it earlier in the season. Alex Bregman spent the first half of the season toiling and tinkering with his swing, eventually grinding his way to a .241/.336/.359 slash with nine homers and 1.7 fWAR.

Had he maintained that same pace the rest of the way, we’d have been looking at quite possibly the worst full season of his career. Instead, his unmatched baseball rattiness eventually led him through the elongated tunnel and into the light at the other end. First, it was borrowing Dansby Swanson‘s bat to shake things up a little, both mentally and physically. Then came an exhaustive video session on Monday night that had Bregman reviewing clips going all the way back to Double-A.

It was evident that something wasn’t quite right with Bregman’s swing, and the data showed subtle differences in his stance that may have contributed to his struggle to generate flush contact. With full admission that this could just be confirmation bias, I saw a hitter who looked tight and frustrated. It was a little like when Jason Heyward was up there looking like he was trying to wring the last drop of water out of a dish towel.

“It’s kind of getting on plane deeper,” Bregman said two weeks ago about briefly changing his weapon of choice. “Hopefully, the heavy bat and also my hands being further back kind of holds me back more, because I’ve been kind of flying forward and cutting the corner and cutting everything. That’s why I’m popping up a lot and missing pitches in the middle.”

I noted at the time that it might have been a little like Dumbo’s magic feather, which is to say that Bregman needed to discover a more permanent fix. Or rather, that the fix had been there the whole time and just needed to be unlocked. That appears to be exactly what happened when Ben Martin, an assistant director of major league development for the Cubs, showed Bregman his KinaTrax data.

Part of Hawkeye, the system MLB uses for ABS challenges, KinaTrax “provides markerless motion capture technology that delivers precise 3D joint location and bone segment orientation.” As such, Martin and Bregman found that the hitter’s shoulders and hips were slightly disassociated at the start of his swing. His hips were a little too open, which was causing him to pull off the ball a bit and lose coverage of the zone.

You can see in the quote above that Bregman was well aware of the symptoms, but he hadn’t yet been able to drill down to the root of the problem. That led to him chasing cues, none of which provided a lasting solution. That’s because fixing a movement can take thousands of reps to repattern the myelin that creates muscle memory. Fixing a position, on the other hand, takes just one rep.

“I’ve had days this year where it’s gone all right and I had a few extra-base hits, and the next day you wake up and you get to the ballpark and it feels completely different, because maybe that cue wasn’t the one that was actually correct,” Bregman explained.

This is all a bit oversimplified, of course, but not every fix has to be complicated. Think of it like being able to see the seams of a ball in a slow-motion Edgertronic video. There’s nothing at all different about the pitcher or the ball, it’s just the technology. Rather than having to seek the perfect feel through endless trial and error, Bregman discovered it on an iPad.

The immediate result was going 5-for-7 with four homers, eight RBI, and three walks over two games in DC, but that’s just the high point of a heater that has been underway for nearly a month. Bregman’s 1.5 fWAR since the break is a half-game above any other third baseman, and his .313/.387/.606 slash over 111 plate appearances is no mirage. If not for Pete Crow-Armstrong, Bregman would be in the running for baseball’s best player in the second half.

That’s why I call Bregman the bellwether of this Cubs team. While he was never expected to return to his 2019 form, Jed Hoyer didn’t give him $175 million just to be a veteran leader. If he’s able to continue being a force in the heart of this lineup, this group has more than a puncher’s chance in the postseason. Hell, the Cubs are only three games behind the Brewers for the division and the NL’s top seed.

These next few weeks could be really fun.