{"id":544519,"date":"2026-01-29T19:40:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T19:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/544519\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T19:40:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T19:40:17","slug":"2026-chicago-cubs-player-profiles-matt-shaw-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/544519\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Chicago Cubs player profiles: Matt Shaw"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Fifth in the series. Today we look at the Cubs\u2019 newly-anointed utility man.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/shawma01.shtml\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Matt Shaw<\/a> is a controversial figure in Cubdom right now. Not for his political beliefs (at this time), but because the signing of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bregmal01.shtml\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alex Bregman<\/a> necessarily leads to a change of position for the young man, and because it looks a bit like fan favorite and team leader Nico Hoerner is going somewhere else after this season to facilitate Shaw\u2019s transference to second base, should there be a 2027 season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The chance of that is non-zero, but that won\u2019t be our focus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Shaw had two different seasons in one. His first half was iffy \u2014 the entire third base contingent were not very good, and none of them got to midseason, except for Shaw, who took over the spot, made a lot of really good defensive plays, and held his own with the bat. His slash line of .226\/.295\/.394, with a bWAR of 3.1, isn\u2019t anything to write home about, but it\u2019s leagues better than Jon Berti was turning in.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Indeed his bWAR figure is in the same ballpark as Bregman\u2019s 2025 (3.5 bWAR). Bregman\u2019s numbers were reduced due to injury. Shaw\u2019s were bolstered by his very good second half. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fangraphs.com\/players\/matt-shaw\/33322\/stats\/batting\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fangraphs<\/a>, who aren\u2019t as influenced by defensive numbers, awarded Shaw 1.5 fWAR, while Bregman garnered 3.5 fWAR.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">It would not surprise me if Shaw flourishes in that role. He certainly has the speed and athleticism to get the job done. I wouldn\u2019t vote against his chances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifth in the series. Today we look at the Cubs\u2019 newly-anointed utility man. Matt Shaw is a controversial&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,70392,4245,161,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-544519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-chicago-cubs-player-profiles","12":"tag-chicagocubs","13":"tag-cubs","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115980089808035942","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}