Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly speaks on Kyle Tucker, Chicago’s potent offense

The offensive fireworks at Wrigley Field have been spectacular. The Chicago Cubs have displayed a lineup that can slug big-time and play small ball, putting them in first place through the first month of a long season.

The Cubs made it through the Tokyo Series and two West Coast road trips, showing that their hitters match up against some of the best starting pitchers and top bullpens in the game. On the last day of April, their offense ranked first or second in the majors in runs scored, hits, walks, stolen bases, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS.

For Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly, this is the organizational outgrowth from years of player development, the shrewd trades made by Jed Hoyer’s front office, investments in targeted free agents and the synergy created in Craig Counsell’s second season managing the club.

“Coming into spring training, it was business,” Kelly told The Athletic on the “North Side Territory” podcast. “The roster is built to win right now. That instantly brings a sense of camaraderie and, ‘Let’s go do this.’ That started early in spring training. The Japan trip was really cool for us to go out and put that to the test. We’ve been rolling with that ever since.

“We know we have what it takes. We can’t wait to show up and play in Pittsburgh tonight. Because you have that mentality of, ‘We are going to win tonight.’ Or, ‘We’re going to take it to this starter tonight.’ How we talk to the hitters is, ‘Let’s go!’ We don’t want off days right now. We want to go out there and play.”

Here are four more takeaways from a conversation with Kelly before Wednesday’s game against the Pirates at PNC Park.

Kyle Tucker changes everything

Cubs officials have described Tucker as a minimalist in terms of how many swings he takes in the cage and how often he goes out to the field for batting practice. Yet, teammates rave about his presence and the consistency he brings to the group. The production is off the charts. Getting traded from the Houston Astros — leading into a contract year that projects to yield hundreds of millions of dollars — has not fazed the superstar.

Kelly: What you see is this very locked-in, low-key guy playing the game at a certain pace. That is him, to a certain extent. He’s got a slow heartbeat. He’s played in some massive games. He’s got an incredible amount of confidence. (It’s that attitude of) there’s nothing that a pitcher has that can beat him. There’s nobody that’s going to be able to get him out in certain situations.

He does have a personality in the background. He cracks jokes. It’s hard to come into a new team, especially when you came up with the Astros and had been in a World Series, and you’ve been with a group and a staff for a long time. To then get traded and have to fit in — I don’t think we ever thought there was going to be a process for him fitting in — but it takes some time. Our guys have fallen in love with him. And I think he’s fallen in love with our guys.

He knows exactly what kind of plan he’s going to try and execute. He has a great recall with pitchers and how guys are going to attack him. He knows that he’s not going to get pitched the way that the report says he’s going to get pitched. It’s not going to be 42 percent fastball. He’s going to see the 3 percent slider or the 3 percent curveball. They attack him differently. He understands that, and he embraces it.

The evolution of Pete Crow-Armstrong

Seeing some unique talents up close, Kelly served as the organization’s minor-league hitting coordinator when the Cubs acquired Crow-Armstrong in the Javier Báez deal at the 2021 trade deadline. At that time, Crow-Armstrong, a first-round pick for the New York Mets in 2020, was recovering from shoulder surgery, which put him in frequent contact with Kelly at the Arizona complex and during his rise through the farm system. Still only 23, the center fielder is already one of the sport’s most exciting players.

Kelly: Everybody always knew that he was going to play great defense, and he could really run. There were questions about the bat. I don’t think internally we had as many questions about the bat as some people had externally. We knew that we were going to have to find something with Pete that was going to stick.

He’s so athletic and he’s so twitchy that the way he moves is almost in this constant state of flow. That’s a challenge for guys when they’re hitting because they just want to feel relaxed. They just want to feel the flow in the batter’s box. But what that would lead to sometimes was — not laziness — but just inconsistency. Going through that process with him last year, he started a little narrow. And then it (became) let’s widen up and do a little leg kick. We’re trying to find the best version of Pete while still allowing him to have that flow and that rhythm.

This year has morphed into a hybrid. It’s a little bit wider. There’s a little bit of a knee tuck. Pete’s put a ton of work into that. This offseason, it was: “How do we simplify this? How do we make sure that what I’m doing is going to be the same every day?” That’s a hard task. It’s not going to be the same every day. But at least he has a really good foundation of: “This is what I want it to be. This is how I’m going to attack baseballs.”

‘Embrace Wrigley’

After Wrigley Field played like an extreme pitchers’ park last season, Counsell and his coaches regrouped to emphasize certain concepts and set up a more adaptable offense. The Cubs averaged six runs per game in April at the Friendly Confines, where first-pitch temperatures usually hovered in the 30s and 40s and the opponents included the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, Arizona Diamondbacks and Philadelphia Phillies.

Kelly: We’ve always known that Wrigley is a special place and that we have an advantage there. The fans, the commitment to the team, everything — when you walk through the doors, you (feel it). The weather is a different factor. Last year was such a weird weather pattern with the way the wind blew in. It just wasn’t advantageous for the hitters. A lot of times, you think that’s going to change: “All right, next week it’s going to be better. When we get back, it’s going to be better.” That just didn’t happen last year.

As a staff, we started talking about, “How do we make this an advantage for us?” We play here every day. We know that it’s not going to be a great place to hit today. So when we’re talking in hitters’ meetings, when we’re talking to our players, what can we do to make our players feel confident that this is still an advantage for us? Throughout the offseason, we came up with, “Embrace Wrigley.”

This is our home turf. We know what it’s going to be like today. We know that it’s not going to be a great time to hit. So what can we do offensively to make sure that we’re giving ourselves the best chance? Whether that’s hit and run, whether that’s bunting, whether that’s having an approach of a low line drive, or we’ve got to pull this guy, we’ve got to stay oppo with this guy, it’s just more conversations and awareness. You still have to go out and execute, which is the hard part. We’re just bringing more awareness to what the situation is and how, as a staff, we can attack that particular day.

The message sent to Matt Shaw

Third base is the one position where the Cubs opened the season with a big question mark and still have not found the answer during this hot streak. The hope remains that Shaw, a first-round pick in the 2023 draft, will benefit from a mental reset at Triple-A Iowa and make some adjustments after looking overmatched during his first exposure to major-league pitching.

Kelly: Matt Shaw is a pure hitter. We’ve all seen that through college and the draft process and the minor leagues. That part of it just didn’t show up in his early stint in the big leagues. There’s a lot of guys that really struggle in their first cup of coffee.

The message was, “Yeah, we are going to make some approach changes.” Make sure that we’re attacking the pitches the way that we talked about attacking pitches. It’s being on fastballs and driving fastballs. And then some of the mechanical stuff — we saw him moving around in the box quite a bit and not having a consistent setup. Those things start to happen when the game speeds up on you. This is a chance for him to go back down there, slow the game down and really lock in.

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