Michael Busch is going toe-to-toe with Pete Crow-Armstrong, Kyle Tucker at the dish

When you play alongside a walking highlight reel like Pete Crow-Armstrong or a perennial MVP candidate in Kyle Tucker, it's pretty easy to fly under the radar. Just ask Chicago Cubs first baseman Michael Busch, who hit his 12th home run of the year, a three-run shot into the right-field basket, in Saturday's 10-7 win over the Seattle Mariners.

That effort raised his OPS on the year to .876 - which actually outpaces Crow-Armstrong (.871) who also homered in the game. Yet it feels like nobody is talking about the year Busch is putting together. He's currently on pace to set new career-highs in virtually every offensive category and is doing his best work over the last month, with an OPS pushing 1.000 across the last four weeks' worth of action.

In his second full big-league season, Busch has proven to be a long-term answer at a position that felt very uncertain in the not-too-distant past. He's a plus defender (although the metrics aren't as bullish on him this year) and a major threat at the plate, capable of going deep in any at-bat, but also patient enough to work his walks at an elite clip.

Michael Busch has been outstanding - but there's a catch in all this, too

The caveat in all of this (and, admittedly, it's glaring) is that Craig Counsell platoons Busch with Justin Turner, protecting the 27-year-old from seeing any action against southpaws. Personally, I hoped he'd get to work through those struggles this year, similar to how Anthony Rizzo did a decade or so ago, but with no other path for at-bats for Turner apart from late-inning pinch-hit gigs, it appears that setup is here to stay.

That's the difference between guys like Tucker and PCA, both of whom are in there on a daily basis, regardless of matchups, and Busch - although Crow-Armstrong has been pretty not great against lefties, as well, slashing just .185/.214/.420 this year. Of course, the Cubs' center fielder can impact a game in several other ways, and his glove alone makes sure he's in the lineup as much as humanly possible.

All this to say: Michael Busch has, yet again, played a quietly underappreciated role on this Cubs team through the first three-plus months of the 2025 campaign. Hopefully, at some point in the future, he gets more left-on-left matchups because otherwise, there's no chance of him improving there, but even as a platoon guy, he's doing some serious damage for a team with its eye on October.