Matt Shaw was the Cubs’ No. 1 pick in 2023 out of Maryland and raced through the system, making his MLB debut this past March in Tokyo.
Unfortunately, Shaw didn’t hit well early in the season. He was batting
.172/.294/.241 (10-for-58) in 18 games through April 14 when he was optioned to Triple-A Iowa for a month.
Returning in mid-May, Shaw hit a bit better — .208/.268/.295 (31-for-149) with two home runs, up to the All-Star break. He still wasn’t producing with average or power, but was drawing some walks.
Some kind of switch flipped for Shaw after the break, because in his first 34 games following the break he batted .298/.343/.691 (28-for-94) with nine home runs. That’s All-Star level performance.
In his last 28 games of the regular season, though, Shaw pretty much matched his May-through-July performance, batting .213/.290/.348 (19-for-89) with two home runs.
Overall, Shaw had a decent season, posting 3.1 bWAR in 126 games, of which he started 114. He hit 13 home runs and had 17 stolen bases. Then he disappeared in the postseason, going 2-for-17 with seven strikeouts (though also five walks).
He also played good defense at third base, at least by the eye test. A good chunk of his bWAR is from defense (1.4), though the advanced metrics (per Fangraphs) don’t back that up — he had negative OAA and FRV.
What, exactly, is Matt Shaw? Is he a guy the Cubs could trust to be a solid third baseman offensively and defensively for several years? Or would the team be better served looking at the free-agent list (and a couple of guys from NPB who might be posted) and making Shaw a super-utility guy — or even trading him?
So for this final entry in this short series about long-term deals for Cubs young players, I’m not going to propose a contract that would eat up his arb years and maybe a year of free agency. He’s a long way from that, as he’s under team control for five more years.
Thus I’m going to let you post a contract proposal for him. Or state whether you agree with one of my other possible choices, or something else I haven’t mentioned.
Have at it.
Tomorrow, I’m going to start a brief series on Cubs veterans on expiring contracts and whether you’d give them extensions or not.
