The Rundown Lite: Shaw’s Slump, DJLM DFA’d, Now You See Me 3

Whew, it’s been a busy week. I spent last night at my fifth Teddy Swims show, which was the best I’ve seen but not close to my favorite. The production value of the set has gone up significantly since his popularity exploded, but I’ll take a tiny, intimate venue any time. We saw him at a little spot in St. Louis when he had to do most of the set from a chair because he’d sprained both ankles. A few weeks later in Louisville, he and some of his bandmates shotgunned beers halfway through.

Though not a perfect comparison, it reminds me a little of the 2015-16 Cubs. That latter year was obviously more successful and achieved icon status due to winning the World Series, but I found the previous year much more fun. It was the band you felt like you discovered and had as your little secret versus the one everybody knew after their hits started getting major airplay.

To that end, I’m starting to feel like an artist who put out a few good albums and is now playing to smaller and smaller crowds on the strength of nostalgia. That’s not baiting the hook and fishing for compliments, just the nature of the beast in a market flooded by all manner of competitors. There were only a few big players in the blog space when this site got started over a decade ago, but the proliferation of outlets both big and small has (over)saturated things.

What’s more, time moves much faster in the digital age. That’s why it’s been nice to bring some younger folks on board to run our social media and modernize our approach a little bit. I won’t get granular about how different social media platforms constantly manipulate their algorithms, but suffice to say that’s not a fun maze to navigate. Enough of my bitching, let’s get to it.

Shaw slumping badly

When Matt Shaw first came back up to the bigs, it looked as though he’d figured something out during his time at Iowa. Over the first 66 plate appearances in his second MLB stint, he slashed .339/.379/.500 with a 149 wRC+ punctuated by a home run in Detroit. Over the month since, however, those numbers have dropped to .122/.207/.159 with a wRC+ of just 8 as his power has all but disappeared.

Shaw is hardly the first young player to struggle, and his recent performance doesn’t mean he can’t rebound in the future, but the Cubs really need an offensive upgrade at third base. No level of defence is enough to make up for run creation that’s 92% worse than average, especially at a position where you really need a strong bat. Even the low average would be mildly palatable if there was some pop to go with it, but there’s not.

Shaw’s .037 ISO is lower than all but two of 186 qualified hitters over the last month and his .159 slugging percentage is dead last by 16 points. The only other hitter struggling to that extent is South Sider Chase Meidroth with a .175 slug and .010 ISO. Though they’ve been content to let him work through it due to the lack of viable replacements — sorry, Jon Berti and Vidal Bruján — the Cubs absolutely must make a move to add a bat.

And while I still say Eugenio Suárez is the best possible option there, going with a cheaper and more readily available solution isn’t outside the realm of possibility.

LeMahieu designated for assignment

There was a little hubbub when the Reds designated former Cub Jeimer Candelario for assignment before releasing him, eating over $22 million in the process. He then signed a minor league deal with the Yankees, who themselves parted ways with a former Cub. It’s hard to believe DJ LeMahieu debuted all the way back in 2011 before being traded with Tyler Colvin to Colorado in exchange for Casey Weathers and Ian Stewart. What a backfire that was.

Stewart quickly became a pariah in Chicago, and Weathers, the eighth overall pick by the Rockies out of Vanderbilt in 2007, pitched only 34 innings with the organization at Double-A in 2012. Though he never reached the bigs, he continues to inspire players at all levels through the “How Good Am I” video produced by Driveline in 2018. This is worth a watch. Weathers

Back to LeMahieu, who will turn 37 in three days and whose play has fallen off dramatically from his time in Colorado and his first four years in the Bronx. He won four Gold Gloves and two batting titles (.348 in 2016, .364 in 2020) with three All-Star nods, even finishing as high as third in MVP voting (2020), quite a bit better than Stewart. Last season was awful for LeMahieu and this year hasn’t been great, but his numbers are far from atrocious.

Over 142 plate appearances with the Yankees, he slashed .266/.338/.336 with a pair of homers while playing second base exclusively. He’s played over 2,300 innings at third and more than 1,550 at first in his career, but Yanks manager Aaron Boone declared that third is now too physically challenging for LeMahieu. Rather than keep him around as a bench bat, they ate the remaining $22 million or so of his six-year, $90 million deal and moved Jazz Chisholm Jr. back to second.

It’s mildly coincidental that Candelario and LeMahieu are set to make about the same amount of salary over the rest of their respective deals, but that’s where the comparisons end. Though Candy Man is over five years younger, his production has tanked much harder. Through 91 PAs with the Reds, he slashed .113/.198/.213 with a 10 wRC+ and -0.7 fWAR. LeMahieu was still performing near league average, which would be a big jump from what Shaw’s doing.

The only problem is that he apparently can’t play third. I’m not saying this is a route the Cubs should take instead of making a big trade, but it can’t hurt to see if he’s amenable to a minor league deal.

Trailer Time

I really enjoyed Now You See Me, and I thought the sequel was fine even if it did lean way too heavily into the idea of this mystical world of magician subculture. It’s like a more forced version of how the John Wick movies portray assassins as making up roughly two-thirds of the world’s population, except a little more forced. I remember discussing the idea of sci-fi writing in a college course, and the rules are that you have to either explain something very thoroughly or you don’t explain it at all. Wick does the latter, but NYSM kind of fell in the middle.

In any case, I still like the general concept of the films and I’m a sucker for Woody Harrelson. Not only did I grow up on him as part of Cheers, but we’re both Sigma Chis from Hanover College. One of my big regrets is that I wasn’t able to go back for homecoming when he was granted an honorary doctorate and came back to visit the house.