The Cubs’ flirtation with touted rookie Matt Shaw is on indefinite hold, Shaw having been demoted to Triple-A Iowa this week.
When the team’s 2023 first-round draft pick opened 2025 by going 10-for-58 with little power and lots of whiffs, Cubs President Jed Hoyer pronounced the breakup, essentially telling Shaw, “I think we should see other people.”
Cubs demote Matt Shaw following extremely difficult schedule
For the present, at least, it means the highlight of Shaw’s 2025 season occurred last December. That’s when the Cubs traded incumbent third baseman Isaac Paredes to Houston, all but openly declaring that Shaw was the anointed successor.
The Cubs did so expecting better from Shaw than they got. Through 18 games, Baseball Savant ranks Shaw among the bottom 20 percent in such vital categories as bat speed, hard hit percentage, and average exit velocity. He has a condemnatory 49 percent chase rate and ranked among the bottom five at third base in fielding range.
Anybody who saw Shaw’s loopy, overly elaborate swing shouldn’t be surprised by that data. And, in fairness to Shaw, the Cubs’ killer first month schedule sent him against some of baseball’s best arms: Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki twice each, plus Tyler Glasnow, Dylan Cease, Nick Pivetta, Zac Gallen and Tyler Mahle, just to name a few.
Facing Yamamoto, Sasaki, Glasnow and Cease in consecutive games will get rookies demoted, which is precisely what occurred to Shaw after he went two-for-11 against that foursome.
The operative question now on the North Side is whether Shaw’s demotion is merely a temporary break or whether the club is ready to sacrifice Shaw's entire 2025 — and possibly his future — in pursuit of its very much alive post-season hopes.
Matt Shaw's terrible start hasn't really been all that terrible
The facts are that even touted rookies often stumble, and teams usually don’t give up on them. Look no deeper into history than 2024.
A year ago, Orioles phenom Jackson Holliday emerged in spring camp as the consensus wunderkind. Holliday was batting .059 when he got the bad news from Baltimore’s front office; he disappeared for three months, returned in late July and finished at .189. He’s batting .216 so far this season.
There is hope. The Brewers signed rookie Jackson Chourio to a long-term deal, handed him the keys to left field, and watched as Chourio hit .202 his first month. Their faith was finally rewarded when he found his stride in May. Chourio finished the season at .275, finished third in Rookie of the Year voting, and is now the centerpiece of Milwaukee’s 2025 offense.
In a weird sense, the Cubs benefitted by the fact that Shaw’s early failure occurred while he was playing third base. Normally, that’s a highly offensive-centric position, but not so in the 2025 National League. In fact, by the standards of the 2025 game, Shaw was actually having a decent — not great, but not terrible — season for an NL third baseman when he was demoted.
Turns out that only a very elite cohort of NL third basemen are doing anything at all offensively this year. The average OPS of starting third basemen is a pitiful .614, Shaw’s .535 somehow ranking middle of the pack. The average Win Probability Added is -0.14, making Shaw’s -0.10 look positively tolerable.
Only a select group of NL third basemen — Austin Riley, Manny Machado and Nolan Arenado by name — are doing anything that could be described as helping their teams. In Philadelphia, Alec Bohm has a .365 OPS. Jeimer Candelario is at .415 in Cincinnati, Oliver Dunn at .439 in Milwaukee, Mark Vientos at .463 with the Mets. Against that quartet, Shaw’s third base contributions looks, well, decent.
It also helps Shaw’s return prospects that the Cubs trade options are limited. Arenado is the one current third baseman of any quality that his team actually has tried to move. But what do you suppose are the chances of Cardinal management coming to the rescue of the Cubs? Even assuming Arenado – with his no-trade clause -- would permit it, St. Louis would probably rather trade with literally any other team.
For the moment, that leaves the Cubs with existing options, those being 40-year-old Justin Turner, Rule 5 pickup Gage Workman, offseason trade target Vidal Brujan, and Jon Berti. As a group, they are 13-for-65 (.200) this season with one extra=base hit, a Workman double, and 17 strikeouts.
It also means that the likelihood of a Shaw return at some point this summer is high, although he probably has to get his groove back in Iowa to make that happen.