PHOENIX — Back in mid-May, near the height of his struggles, Chicago Cubs third baseman Alex Bregman sent manager Craig Counsell a text message.
Bregman had been taking a lot of pitches down the middle or middle-in early in the season amid his struggles and wanted to explain his thought process to Counsell.
“When I don’t feel good, I kind of swing less because I know it’s not right,” Bregman said. “As soon as I load, I know that it’s not right, so it’s not going to be good if I swing because I’m not going to swing-and-miss, I’m going to put the ball in play. And I need to get right mechanically, and when I get right mechanically, it’ll go.
“Mechanically, it was really just disconnected and I knew it wasn’t right from Game 1 of the season. I had to figure out what it was.”
The May text exchange stemmed from a conversation about hitting and whether Bregman should look to be more aggressive earlier in the count to try to tap into his slug and why he felt that wasn’t the best approach.
“It was very clear 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,” Counsell said. “He didn’t tell you exactly when it’s going to happen, but how he was going to go about it. And it’s how he went about it, and it’s how he fixed it.”
The results started to come in July. Bregman posted, at that time, a season-best .263 average and .825 OPS in the month.
Since then, Bregman’s been scorching. Dating to July 27, he’s tied for the MLB lead in hits (37) and RBIs (25), second in slugging (.664) and home runs (9), and third in OPS (1.062).
Bregman entered Tuesday hitting .296 with a .370 on-base percentage and .972 OPS in August.
“The start of the year was super frustrating because I feel like, for me, personally, I don’t feel like this is a hot stretch,” Bregman said. “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. Because I feel like if you look at it like you’re trying to go make it all happen …
“I think everyone kind of falls accustomed to this at some point when it’s not going well, but it kind of turns into you trying to get your whole season back in one at-bat, as opposed to taking each at-bat individually. The way I kind of looked at it was, I’m trying to get this right for the long haul in my career. It kind of takes off the need to hit a grand slam every single at-bat to get your season back.”
Bregman said he has always been a big “feel” guy when it comes to his swing and mechanics.
Many hitters prefer to see a ball’s flight and let that show them where their swing is at. Bregman needs his internal cues about how his body is moving. Whether it was during his prep career in New Mexico, starring at LSU in college and into his professional career with the Houston Astros and then the Boston Red Sox, this is how the 32-year-old thinks about his swing.
“I’ve always thought mechanics every single day in the box — most people don’t,” Bregman said. “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. I’ve always thought mechanics and it’s not just me overcomplicating stuff. Normally, I get one mechanical thought and then I take that into the game.”
He never wavered from the process, though, even through those tough months. And though it’s a different process than most hitters take, the consistency in his work didn’t waver. Counsell and the Cubs learned a lot about Bregman through those struggles and the veteran’s mission to get his swing, and by extension his offensive production, back on track.
“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.”
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