Amidst early struggles, Cubs rookie Matt Shaw's success in one key area offers hope

After cycling through a revolving door at third base last season, the Chicago Cubs hope top prospect Matt Shaw will establish himself as a long-term solution this year. But the early returns haven't been great for the former first-rounder, who enters Saturday with a disappointing .160/.300/.240 slash line in 60 trips to the dish.

Baseball Savant pegs him as a solidly below-average player in just about every metric through the season's first two weeks - but there's one area he's found success: drawing walks. Shaw has walked at a 16.7 percent clip, which ranks in the 90th percentile. The only Cubs players who've drawn more walks are Kyle Tucker and Seiya Suzuki, a pair of middle-of-the-order power threats.

He's paired that walk rate with a strikeout rate that's only barely below league average, another reason to hope there's more to come from the 23-year-old infielder. The Cubs are going to give him a long leash - and we all need to keep in mind he's facing some elite competition in April given the team's strength of schedule - and teammate Pete Crow-Armstrong's rocky start at the plate in his big-league career should be top of mind during these struggles.

Crow-Armstrong cracked the Cubs' roster late in the 2023 season, going hitless in 19 plate appearances, slashing just .000/.176/.000. While he notched his first hit early in 2024, he wasn't exactly a force to be reckoned with at the dish, evidenced by a .198 /.250/.271 mark through mid-June. But as he got more at-bats and settled in, he really found himself, slashing .282/.338/.419 from Aug. 24 through the end of the year.

The hope is Shaw can find his footing sooner than PCA did last year, but the lesson to be learned remains the same: the jump from the minors to the big leagues has never been more challenging. The gap between Triple-A and MLB talent is tremendous and you see it when guys make the jump. Shaw is not only being tasked with being a solution to a longstanding problem at third base, but he's still learning how to be a big-leaguer - a challenge in and of itself.

We're still in small sample-size territory - so criticisms of his unorthodox batting stance need to be put on the back burner for the time being. But the fact he's not punching out 40 percent of the time while also seeing pitches and drawing walks offers at least a glimmer of hope for what's to come from the young infielder.