RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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WASHINGTON — Digging into his swing changes had Alex Bregman poring over video in his hotel room into the early morning hours Tuesday.
Chicago Cubs assistant director of major-league development Ben Martin was by his side, showing him the KinaTrax data that broke down how Bregman’s body is biometrically organized, particularly when he loads at the beginning of his swing. Martin then pulled up old video of Bregman from his 2016 season at Double-A Corpus Christi to highlight where the third baseman mechanically wants to be.
“We saw some pretty glaring differences, and we searched back to kind of double check it on video and watched that,” Bregman explained. “Then I mean woke up in the morning thinking about it. Got here (Tuesday) right into the cage, trying to think about the same things that we talked about.”
The adjusted alignment of Bregman’s shoulder and hips have helped everything click through the Cubs’ first two games against the Washington Nationals. After hitting a home run in Tuesday’s win , he one-upped his performance Wednesday in a big way.
Bregman slugged three home runs for the first time in his career and finished with seven RBIs in a 12-6 win against the Nationals to pull the Cubs within 3 games of the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers. The seven RBIs also represented a career high for the 10-year veteran. Bregman believes his mechanics have been locked in since the tweaks he made following his conversations with Martin.
“I feel like the last month or so has been a step in the right direction, but really the last two days have been a real step in the right direction,” Bregman said. “I’ve had days this year where it’s gone all right and had a few extra-base hits, and then the next day you wake up and you get to the ballpark and it feels completely different because maybe that cue wasn’t the one that was actually correct.”
The Cubs are only the third team since RBIs became an official stat in 1920 to have two players with a three-home-run, seven-RBI game in a season, joining the New York Yankees’ Paul O’Neill and Mike Stanley in 1995, the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and Jasson Domínguez in 2025 and now Dansby Swanson and Bregman this year.
“Every year you get reminded, and you kind of have to slap yourself in the face, it’s 162 games,” manager Craig Counsell said. “It’s a 162-game season, and you can’t fake it through 162 games. Players come to play over 162 games, and that’s what Alex is doing, and it’s a credit to how he works every single day and is just relentless with his search to be himself and to be the best version of himself. He will never give you an inch on that.”
The Cubs (71-50) — a season-high 21 games over .500 — lead the majors with 17 games in which they scored 10 runs or more and are averaging 7.1 runs in their last nine games, eight of which have been victories.
Left-hander David Peterson did enough — four runs (three earned) in five innings — to keep a tough Nationals offense in check to allow the Cubs lineup to break out.
The Cubs cashed in, again, with two outs.
A deep lineup has been tough to put away in those spots this season. Their four runs scored with two outs Wednesday gave them an MLB-leading 241 runs in two-out situations. The offense has been especially dangerous in August — 36 of their 70 runs this month have come with two outs. The Cubs were already second in on-base percentage (.344) and fourth in average (.248) and OPS (.741) in two-out opportunities.
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“We’ve got a lot of good players, a lot of guys that have been successful in this league for a lot of time now,” said Swanson, who doubled and hit his 18th home run of the season. “Guys that are prepared and go about the business the right way. Guys that take at-bats with the team in mind and going up there to compete. And when you’ve got nine guys doing that, makes it really tough.”
The Cubs have been relentless against lefties this season, and that pressure continued Wednesday with lefty Jackson Kent, a Lake Park graduate from Hanover Park, making his major-league debut for the Nationals.
The Cubs entered Wednesday leading the majors in on-base percentage (.357), slugging percentage (.449) and OPS (.806) and second in batting average (.270) with the second-most runs scored (185) off lefties. Their deep lineup made Kent work, drawing five walks in four-plus innings against the 23-year-old.
Although Kent struck out Pete Crow-Armstrong in his first two at-bats, the center fielder bested the rookie in the fifth inning with a game-tying RBI double. The Cubs also scored three runs (one earned) off lefty reliever Tom Cosgrove.
“I don’t think our approach is necessarily different,” Counsell said. “We’ve had some guys that have had really good years against left-handed pitching, and I think Pete and Michael (Busch) have been very good against left-handed pitching, and I think that’s been a big deal. I mean, Pete’s been incredible, and he’s hitting at the top of your lineup, that’s a big deal. He’s getting the most at-bats, and he’s been one of the better hitters in baseball, period.”
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