Cubs’ 3 shocking surprises to begin 2024 season

The 6-foot-1, sweet-swinging lefty Michael Busch was clearly big-league ready with the Los Angeles Dodgers, but there was just one problem. Busch didn’t really profile as a second baseman anymore at the MLB level, and the Dodgers had a guy named Freddie Freeman occupying first base. Plus, at 26 years old, Busch was losing trade value quickly. So the Dodgers shipped him off to Chicago, along with reliever Yency Almonte, for prospects Jackson Ferris and Zyhir Hope.

Man, what a boon to the Cubs that appears to have been. Busch is currently fourth in all of baseball with a 1.141 OPS, has clubbed a team-high six home runs, and has now homered in five straight games. And he hit his first homer of the season back on April 3 against the Dodgers, which one has to imagine was a pretty sweet moment of revenge.

First base was one of the biggest question marks for the Cubbies coming into the year. When the team resigned Cody Bellinger, a lot of the discourse centered around whether he might take over first long-term and allow top prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong to come up and man center field. But so far, Busch hasn’t even allowed that to be a discussion. He’s carrying Chicago’s offense at the moment and even if he just keeps up 85% of this production, he’ll have that first base job for many years to come.

The rest of the Cubs need to start raking

Behind Busch, Seiya Suzuki was off to the best offensive start on the club, carrying an .893 OPS through his first 15 games. But now Suzuki has landed on the IL and the rest of the bats hitting in the top half of the Cubs’ order are going to be forced to pick up the slack.

Dansby Swanson, off to a bit of a slow start, has a .700 OPS. That’s actually the highest of the remaining hitters the Cubs have typically hit between lineup spots 1-6. Nico Hoerner is at .600, Christopher Morel .671, Ian Happ .660 and Cody Bellinger .583.

That’s not sustainable in any form or fashion and is actually a credit to the Cubs that the team has managed to rally and string together wins despite an overall team OPS of .726, barely above league average. If and when these marquee names begin to hit their strides, the Cubs can really start to make their mark in what looks to be a hotly contested National League Central this season. Perhaps all it will take is a few days of friendly winds at Wrigley Field to jump-start the offense.

Javier Assad and Ben Brown??

It’s been well-documented that Shota Imanaga has carried the Cubs’ pitching staff thus far. With no earned runs and two wins in his first three big-league starts, Imanaga has captivated the attention of the Cubs’ fanbase, while giving the team a much-needed boost with Justin Steele on the IL. But the second- and third-best starters on the team have been fascinating as well.

Javier Assad was mainly used as a spot starter and long reliever for the Cubs in 2023, but it appears he’s taken his game to a new level in 2024. Forced into full-time starting duties, Assad has a 2.16 ERA and 18 strikeouts in 16.2 innings. His entire six-pitch arsenal has been working, he’s getting tons of weak contact and he’s only allowed 11 hits, by far the fewest of any starter on the staff.

But if Assad was a surprise, Ben Brown is a full-on shocker. The former 2017 33rd-rounder with the Phillies debuted at the start of this season as a reliever and has been thrust into starting duties the last two trips through the rotation. All he’s done in those two starts is pitch 10.2 innings while allowing just four hits and a single earned run. Especially for a guy that gave up six runs in his first outing as a reliever, that’s a remarkable amount of poise to be showing as a minor league journeyman finally getting his first shot in the show.

Of course, there’s no guarantee either of these starters will continue to dominate. But the moxie each has shown is beyond what the Cubs could have hoped for given the circumstances. And if this team is going to make a serious run at a National League pennant this year, these are exactly the kind of standout performances it needs from unlikely contributors. So don’t be surprised if Ben Brown is this year’s Brandon Pfaadt, shutting down some of the game’s most prolific lineups when the chips are down in October.