00:00With the Chicago Cubs, they surge toward the postseason.
00:03No, this is not the Pete Crow Armstrong segment,
00:05although we could do 10 minutes on PCA.
00:07He's been great.
00:08Alex Bregman, what do you make of his season, Tom?
00:11It seems like to me in a league where batting average is down,
00:15.258 is like the new .288.
00:18He has 19 home runs, 67 runs driven,
00:21and his OPS, you know, not where I'm sure he wanted it to be.
00:24I'm sure that you would have probably thought Bregman was an 800 OPS guy,
00:27but there's still a month to go in the season.
00:30And from all accounts in Boston and previously in Houston,
00:34and I came to know Alex Bregman pretty well while he was in Houston,
00:36he provides a lot more than just the stats to his team,
00:40and that's part of, I think, what he's probably done for the Cubs.
00:42There's no question the Cubs at this point,
00:45I think, will probably avoid a collapse like we saw a few years ago.
00:49They seem good enough to do that.
00:50Now, I don't know how far they're going to go, Tom.
00:52I don't want to anoint them winning a first-round series.
00:54I'm not going to do that.
00:55But Bregman has brought a lot to their table this year.
00:58He certainly has.
00:59You know, admittedly, I was not very high on Bregman coming into the year,
01:02just his age declining, his power.
01:05He also played in two parts between Houston and Boston
01:08that were really good for him with a very high air pull rate.
01:12Those were like two parts that are tailor-made for that type of swing.
01:15I was like, oh, it's Wrigley.
01:17It's a little bit different.
01:18I'm just not high on him in terms of potential fantasy production.
01:22But because of the lineup overall, I thought, okay,
01:24with PCA and Suzuki and Michael Bush, I'm like, okay, he'll be fine overall.
01:28But to your point, what he brings to the lineup is more than just the counting stats.
01:32And this time of year, with him surging and PCA surging,
01:35I think they're going to carry the lineup.
01:37And to your point with the postseason matchup,
01:40if they get a good postseason matchup, they can sweep it.
01:42If they get a bad one, they may not win a game.
