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When Cubs manager Craig Counsell said during spring training that he was looking to give Christopher Morel some run at third base, every one knew there’d probably be some growing pains.
The plan made sense. He’s very athletic, and he has a strong arm. He also hadn’t been given much of an opportunity to do that since being promoted to the majors two years ago.
But he’d had his struggles at third base previously, and it wasn’t a guarantee he’d develop into a reliable option there. So, if some defensive struggles were to come during the process, the only question was if Morel’s bat could provide enough positive value to offset them.
Thus far, he hasn’t left that in doubt.
Morel has had a strong start to the season offensively. Even after a 0-for-4, two-strikeout game Friday in Seattle, he’s hitting .275 with an .825 OPS and a 121 wRC+. He’s homered three times while knocking in 10 runs. And perhaps the most important stat of them all is that he’s posting a 16.7 percent strikeout rate.
That last number is what stands out for Morel. In his first two seasons with the Cubs, his strikeout rate sat at 32.2 percent and 31 percent, respectively. He had solid seasons at the plate regardless, but there always remained the thought that, if he could cut down the swing-and-miss, it could help unlock even stronger offensive performances. That’s what we’ve seen thus far.
But how exactly has that come about?
For one, Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly believes just having seen nearly two full seasons of major league pitching has played a part.
“It’s similar with Morel and Seiya [Suzuki],” Kelly said. “They start to create, I call it a catalogue of pitches and a catalog of pitchers, and they’re adding to that catalog. The more and more pitches they see, the more they get to visualize that arm slot, the shape of that pitch. Really good hitters start to just take that next step and that jump.”
But there are also noticeable differences in Morel at the plate in the early going.
With as much raw power as Morel has, swing-and-miss was an inevitable part of his game. The Cubs could live with it as long as he provided the kind of power the lineup needed. And he did — in his debut season in 2022, his isolated power and slugging percentage were both solidly above league average, and those became way-above-average numbers for him in 2023.
But while those numbers have remained high (.235 ISO, .510 slugging), he’s not swinging through balls to the extent he has in the past.
Through 54 plate appearance this season, his whiff rate sits at 22.1 percent (64th percentile in MLB). Not only is that a major improvement for him — his whiff rates were 38.3 percent and 37 percent in 2022 and ’23, respectively — it’s even below the current league average of 25.5 percent.
That’s reflected in Morel’s swing and contact rates as well:
That all has led to an 79.8 percent contact rate, above the 76.8 percent average across the league.
It’s not that he’s swinging at much of a different rate than he did previously. His 52.3 percent swing rate only a couple percentage points above what it was in his previous two seasons.
What’s happening is that he’s putting a plan together on how pitchers are going to attack him, he’s not chasing bad pitches (19.6 percent chase rate, 88th percentile in MLB), and when he gets his pitch, he’s not missing.
“We talked about it last year of him just gaining at-bats and honing in and kind of figuring out what his approach is, the way that we attack pitchers, the way that pitchers are gonna attack him,” Kelly said. “He’s just done a really good job of knowing exactly what he’s looking for, why he’s looking for it and how some of that matches up with his swing.
“He’s done a really, really good job of just laying off some pitches that are really tough pitches that are still good pitchers’ pitches, but he’s laid off of those and put himself in some really good counts. That’s just been a huge, huge win for him so far.”
Early last homestand, only a few games into the season, these developments in Morel were already showing.
Asked then what he was seeing from the young slugger, Counsell was clearly impressed with his plate approach.
“Really, since the start of spring training, to me, it’s just been hard-hit balls and a real controlled aggression is the best way I’d describe it,” Counsell said on April 2. “There hasn’t been chase, and that’s been, you know, we’re 50-60 at-bats in now [since the start of spring games]. With the way the chase looks, it just looks like he’s really got a good handle on that.
“He’s done a really nice job with that, and that’s gonna make him really dangerous, because obviously, there’s hard, hard contact in there.”
Funny Counsell mentions the “hard, hard contact” in Morel’s bat, because even with the improvements in his plate discipline thus far, they haven’t come at the cost of a ton of power:
He went 0-for-8 with four strikeouts in the last two games, which in a sample of just over 50 PAs has brought his numbers down some, but Morel has still opened some eyes to start the season.
He’s making mostly the same hard contact he has in the past, but he’s doing it by focusing on getting his pitch in his zone and letting others go by. That’s the kind of approach that can help any hitter reach a new level, and it’s shown for Morel through the first couple weeks of the year.
“He’s just kind of locked in and dialed his approach in of being like, ‘Hey, I’m looking for it here. This is where my go-zone is or this is where my sights are set, and I’m gonna stick to that throughout the entire at-bat,'” Kelly said. “He swings early, he’s still aggressive, he’s doing all the stuff that he’s really good at, but he’s just eliminated some of the chase off the plate.”
Can he keep it up? That’s the question Morel faces going forward.
It wouldn’t be a surprise to see his career-best strikeout and whiff rates or his out-of-zone rates regress some, if only because that’s previously been a part of his game and pitchers may make adjustments in how they attack him.
But if he can limit any regression in those areas while continuing to hit the ball with authority, the Cubs are looking at a really strong hitter producing in the heart of the order.
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