Alex Bregman wishes he would have run a little harder Sunday in Milwaukee.
Thanks to a bobble, a seemingly routine ground out to shortstop turned into a chance for a base runner on a day where runs were at a premium against an effective Brewers pitching staff.
But Bregman, far from busting it down the first-base line, couldn’t take advantage and was thrown out, much to the dismay of fans already frustrated with a lack of offensive results from the Cubs’ big-ticket free agent.
The play even earned something of an admonishment from Cubs announcer Jim Deshaies.
Alex Bregman hasn’t been a Cub for more than a cup of coffee, but he’s already wearing out his welcome.
The $175 million man heard it from the Cubs broadcast team on Sunday for not hustling down the line.
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— New York Post Sports (@nypostsports) June 29, 2026
“Yes,” the third baseman said, asked Monday if he regretted not running harder, before adding some context. “And I’ve also had 10 soft-tissue injuries running down the first-base line, specifically.
“There’s kind of some give and take. But at the same time, obviously, I wish I beat the throw.”
Experienced hands like Bregman know their bodies, and there is a balance between going hard enough to make something happen and overdoing it to the point of risking injury.
But Sunday’s mistake proved a bad look for a player who’s been slow to show, statistically, why the Cubs shelled out $175 million for his services last winter.
Blunt in answers about how his season has gone to this point, Bregman is the last person who needs to be reminded of his lack of production. He’s a studious presence in the clubhouse with a reputation of being among the hardest workers around.
But that reputation has yet to equal results, and he came into Monday still searching, the owner of a .335 slugging percentage that ranked in the bottom 15 of qualified hitters in baseball. His .671 OPS would be the lowest of his career by a wide margin, the previous low-water mark .768 two seasons ago.
His .181 batting average and .253 slugging percentage in June were particularly ugly.
Obviously, he’s working to try to fix it. What’s he working on, exactly?
“What’s your guess?” he responded jokingly, acknowledging his struggles have been obvious to anyone watching. “Hitting the baseball.”
Asked to get more specific, the answer remained easily predictable. The guy with a career slugging percentage .135 points higher than his current number is trying to hit for more power.
“Just being in a consistent spot to be able to hit the ball hard in the air,” he said. “Get back to swinging at pitches that I want to hit and not swinging at pitches that are outside the strike zone. Basically the same stuff. Hit the ball, swing at pitches I can drive and take pitches that I can’t. Hone it in, be better.”
Plenty of frustrated fans would agree that “be better” is a good target.
The Cubs, with their big-money investment in the two-time World Series champ, are unsurprisingly expecting “better” to show up any day now.
Could a loud turnaround moment – like the 15 RBIs previously slumping shortstop Dansby Swanson, the team’s second highest paid player, racked up in two days against the Mets — be on the horizon for Bregman?
“He works and works and works,” team president Jed Hoyer said last week in New York. “No one’s going to outwork him to figure out what it is [that’s wrong].
“I was getting peppered with questions on the radio the other day about Dansby and his struggles. All of a sudden — ‘snap’ — he breaks out of it. That’s how it happens.
“My expectation is at some point, [Alex] will get red hot, and these questions will be a distant memory. In the meantime, he’s trying to get on base, he’s getting some hits, but the slug just hasn’t been there. It’s kind of always been there for him, and I’m sure it’s a matter of time before we see that.”
If the Cubs can get that out of Bregman, it’s another massive boost to an offense recently revived from an early-summer slumber, and it would be extraordinarily helpful in bailing out an injury-ravaged pitching staff.
Until such a turnaround comes, though, Bregman will stay under the microscope of Cubs fans waiting for him to play up to the contract that got them so excited in the offseason.
