MINNEAPOLIS — In the afterglow of rookie third baseman Matt Shaw’s walk-off sacrifice fly last week against the Guardians, he pointed out a sobering fact: ‘‘Hit some balls [hard], and all of them were caught today. So still waiting for those balls to start dropping.’’
Shaw was out of the Cubs’ lineup Wednesday in Minnesota, stuck in a five-game hitless streak. During that stretch, he has gone 0-for-17.
‘‘Matty has been struggling at the plate,’’ manager Craig Counsell said before the Cubs’ 4-2 loss to the Twins. ‘‘So I’d say, no, it wasn’t a planned day off from that perspective. But just a little breather here and a day to work on some things without having a game to follow’’
Shaw’s struggles at the plate stretch back further than this hitless stretch. In his last 70 at-bats, he’s hitting .144.
Compared to earlier in the season, however, when the Cubs sent Shaw to Triple-A Iowa to work on his swing, he has been terrific defensively.
Shaw also returned from that Triple-A stint on a hot streak at the plate, batting .378 in his first 10 games back. It just didn’t last.
‘‘His defense matters, for sure,’’ Counsell said. ‘‘That can get players in the lineup. It’s an important part of the game. It’s gotten him in the lineup a couple of days through this stretch, absolutely.’’
The growth Shaw has shown on defense is also part of why the Cubs continue to believe in his potential to be the answer at third base. Their approach to the trade deadline will provide some insight into whether they expect him to reach that potential this season.
‘‘This is the pattern that a lot of young players go through,’’ president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said last week. ‘‘It’s not always linear, as I’ve said two million times in my 14 years here. We had very similar conversations about Pete [Crow-Armstrong] last year. I’m not saying that Matt’s gonna have the August and September that Pete had last year, but we had these same conversations about: ‘Where is he? Where’s his OPS? What’s this doing to him mentally? Is he going to be able to fight through this?’ ’’
Crow-Armstrong turned his first full major-league season around with an .803 OPS in the final two months. And there’s still time for Shaw to provide offensive value from the bottom of the lineup.
He said he started feeling more like himself in the batter’s box toward the end of June.
‘‘A lot of adjustments, most of them not working,’’ Shaw said after hitting two doubles in the Cubs’ 7-4 loss to the Astros two weeks ago. ‘‘But one in particular, just keeping my hands a little bit closer to the center of my body. For some reason, that got me back to what feels right.’’
It wasn’t a permanent fix. Hitting coach Dustin Kelly described the process as honing Shaw’s swing piece by piece, not just throwing things out there and seeing what sticks.
‘‘We’re getting to that point where it’s like, ‘OK, this is really close,’ ’’ Kelly told the Sun-Times on Tuesday. ‘‘And then we have something that we can stick to and that becomes part of the routine. Then that’s what his swing is, what his approach is and what his move is.’’
In that walk-off victory against the Guardians last week, Shaw drove four balls in the air. All had exit velocities of more than 90 mph, and two came off the bat at more than 101 mph, according to Statcast. None resulted in a hit.
‘‘That’s the cool part about being a young player on a team that’s in it to win right now,’’ Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner told the Sun-Times after Shaw’s sacrifice fly. ‘‘Obviously, you want to develop and be the best version of yourself, but all things work backward from winning today. And his defense and quality of at-bat has been really, really great. And he’s going to be a big part of it going forward.’’
