The Cubs Top of the Order Is Raking
Although the Cubs are on a three-game losing streak with two really tough losses thus far in Seattle, that doesn’t take away from how great their offense has been.
In particular, the top of the order.
Outside of the defense the Cubs have, their offense is what they’re best at.
What has made this offense so great this season is its depth.
With that being said, the first hitters in the lineup have been phenomenal after the All-Star break.
The three hitters that have been on fire after the break are Pete Crow-Armstrong, Seiya Suzuki, and Alex Bregman. PCA and Seiya have been more consistent in their production this season than Alex Bregman.
Outside of Crow-Armstrong making an extremely strong case for MVP, Alex Bregman might be the next biggest story when thinking about this Cubs team after the All-Star Game.
Bregman has an OPS of .769 this season, which is above the league average of .719. Bregman’s above-average OPS this season doesn’t do his second half justice, given how great he has been. Bregman had an OPS of .696 in the first half of the season, which puts him in a tie for the one hundred and seventeenth-best OPS in the big leagues. In the second half, he has an OPS of .973, which is the fifth-best in the entire league! The contrast between his performance before and after the All-Star break is fascinating, and he has been extremely fun to watch as of late. Looking at Pete and Seiya’s performances this season, they have both been near the top of the leaderboard in OPS throughout the season.
Obviously, with the way Pete has been playing, he is higher on the leaderboard than Seiya, with the fourth-best OPS in all of baseball this season, but Seiya has been really impactful this season.
Not only does Suzuki have the twenty-fifth-best OPS in the league this season as a whole, but he has improved in the second half as well. He had the forty-sixth-best OPS in baseball in the first half, and now has the twentieth-best OPS in the league in the second half. These three players at the top of the Cubs’ order have been productive when looking at their numbers on the season from a distance, but they have really turned things up a notch in the second half.
For a team that has the second-highest OPS this season at .757, these three hitters have been the biggest reason for that.
They are all in the top twenty on the OPS leaderboard during the second half, and have provided the Cubs with a lot of power in the second half.
The Cubs as a team have forty nine home runs after the All-Star break, and these three have twenty-eight of them.
That is roughly 57%! Having production like this at the top of the order is something that makes this team particularly dangerous, and with thirty-two games remaining in the regular season, this group should have plenty more in store.
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Categorized:Cubs