Cade Horton hasn’t pitched since May, so right now Matt Shaw is the Cubs top prospect and I have no idea why the hell he’s still at Double-A. Nothing against the great people in Tennessee, but why the hell is Shaw still there? I’m not even pounding the table, demanding for the Cubs to call him up to the big leagues, but how about we get Shaw to Iowa like yesterday?
It’s a crime that Shaw still has not been promoted because what else does he have to prove facing pitching at Double-A? The 2023 first round pick had a couple rough weeks at the end of April and into the month of May, but outside of that brief slump Shaw has been a star. On Wednesday night, the right-handed hitter reached base five times for the Smokies, singling in four at-bats and drawing a walk in his six plate appearances.
There was about a two-week period from June 28-July 8 in which Shaw didn’t play, but ever since he’s returned to the lineup the 22-year-old has looked as good as he’s ever been in the Cubs system. Following his four-hit game Wednesday night, Shaw is slashing .373/.414/.647, with 4 home runs, while striking out only 4 times and having 3 walks in his last 14 games.
That’s a 203 wRC+ in Shaw’s previous 59 plate appearances.
Like most players in the minor leagues and yes that does include top prospects as well, Shaw had his struggles in his first full season out of college. From April 24 through May 7, he only hit .108 in 11 games. But those days are long gone and since May 9, Shaw has posted a slash line of .304/.374/.522, with 11 home runs in 239 plate appearances.
We’re not talking about a hot couple weeks that makes a player’s numbers look better than they are. That’s a stretch of 55 games where Shaw has been 60% better than the average hitter in Double-A, is hitting for average, hitting for power, while at the same time maintaining a walk rate near 10% and cutting his strikeouts to 16.3%.
Shaw isn’t the slugging college prospect that guys like Kris Bryant and Kyle Schwarber were back in the 2010s in the Cubs farm system and while the Maryland product doesn’t have the monster numbers those guys had at Double-A, he is very much deserving of a new challenge.
Bryant played in 36 games in the minors after he was drafted in 2013 and then was promoted to Triple-A in 2014 after spending 68 games at Double-A. Schwarber played in 72 games after his selection from Indiana and was bumped up to Iowa after only 58 games with Tennessee in 2015.
Of course, the Cubs were a lot closer to contending back then, as Bryant was flourishing as a rookie third baseman and Schwarber was called up in the summer to give the offense a boost down the stretch. Maybe the Cubs don’t have the same sense of urgency with Shaw, but going back to last year he’s closing in on 100 games at Double-A. They obviously felt he was good enough for Double-A fairly soon after he was taken with the 13th overall pick last year.
Now it’s time for the Cubs to promote Matt Shaw to the next level.
