SEATTLE – There was a text message from Alex Bregman back in May that buzzed the phone of Cubs manager Craig Counsell. The veteran third baseman wanted to explain the plan he had for getting his season back on track in the batter’s box.
If Bregman appeared passive with his approach, it was because he was working on regaining the proper feel with the load in his swing. It was going to take time, and countless swings behind the scenes, tweaks tested in games, deep dives into video and more experimenting on top of all that, to get all the components of the swing connected again.
“It was very clear,” Counsell said. “And it was very laid out and it made sense to me that this is how he’s going to get better and is going to fix it. He didn’t tell you exactly when it’s going to happen, but how he was going to go about it.”
Bregman began to turn a corner about a month ago and has not slowed down, including reaching base two more times in Sunday’s 19-2 rout of the Mariners at T-Mobile Park. He drew a pair of walks -- one ahead of Ian Happ’s third-inning grand slam -- and contributed a sacrifice fly in the ninth. He finished the series in Seattle with three home runs and six RBIs.
Maybe Bregman has flown a bit under the radar, especially with all the feats and headlines being piled up by Cubs star Pete Crow-Armstrong this season. But going into Sunday’s action, Bregman was tied with Fernando Tatis Jr. for second in the Majors in fWAR (1.9) in the second half, trailing only Crow-Armstrong (2.4) in that all-encompassing category.
In the three games in Seattle, Bregman belted three more homers to reach 19 on the season. The third baseman currently has 3.7 fWAR, plus a .766 OPS and 115 wRC+ on the year.
“The start of the year was super frustrating,” Bregman said. “I feel like, for me, personally, I don’t feel like this is a hot stretch. I feel like this is who I am as a baseball player. It was frustrating. But the way I looked at it was like, I’m going to figure out what’s going on, so I know for the next 10 years of my career, so I [don't] have to deal with this again.”
After an extra-inning loss to the Giants on June 7, Bregman held court with reporters, shouldering the blame for what had been an extended cold spell for Chicago’s offense at the time. Signed to a five-year, $175 million contract last offseason, Bregman was blunt in his self-evaluation, saying: “They brought me here to play good baseball and I haven't played good baseball. I need to figure it out.”
Through 102 games, Bregman had a .234/.331/.351 slash line (.682 OPS) with 10 home runs and 44 RBIs in 468 plate appearances. In the 26 games that have followed, the third baseman has hit .343/.407/.686 (1.093 OPS) with nine homers and 25 RBIs in 118 plate appearances. That recent run dates back to July 27, when Bregman had a four-hit game in St. Louis.
In that game against the Cardinals, Bregman borrowed Dansby Swanson’s slightly heavier bat to help with his hand positioning and slow his swing down some. After a three-homer game against the Nationals on Aug. 12, Bregman said a late-night video session helped unearth some cues that were off with his hips and shoulders at the start of his swing.
“Alex was very consistent, really, in the way he talked about it,” Counsell said. “I give him a lot of credit for this. He was just like, ‘I’m not doing things correctly mechanically, and I know what I have to do. I can’t feel it. When I get the feeling, I’ll be able to ride out that feeling, but I don’t have that feeling right now.’
“He was relentless in his work to get there. And that process, it’s a process of an incredibly dedicated professional. It is an overwhelmingly time-consuming process that he goes through to try to fix that, to try to get there. And to his credit, that part never wavered, you know? It never wavered. And it was really interesting.”
Bregman said the goal of the text exchange with Counsell earlier in the season was to give the manager more insight into his process, which can look different from other hitters.
“I’ve always thought mechanics every single day in the box,” Bregman said. “Most people don’t. It’s kind of different. I think that was kind of what I was kind of expressing, was like, ‘I promise, I’ve done this.’"