Chicago Cubs first-round draft pick Matt Shaw made his first appearance at Wrigley Field on Monday ahead of the team’s game against the Washington Nationals, and while buzz is certainly high around one of the college game’s best hitters, he instead made waves with his views on the idea of failure.
Shaw, taken with the No. 13 pick in the 2023 draft out of Maryland, says he feels there will be different pressures in the big leagues, but recognizes that failure is a much-larger part of the game than it is in college.
“There’s two ways to look at failure. You either look at it as when you’re playing in the big leagues there is so much failure that there’s a lot of pressure on the player, or you look at it as there is so much failure that everybody is failing,” he said. “Mike Trout is failing. Shohei Ohtani is failing. There’s really not as much pressure as you go up.”
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In 62 collegiate games last season, Shaw hit 24 home runs and drove in 69 RBI’s, along with 18 stolen bases. He slashed .341/.445/.697, and was considered one of the top hitters in all of college baseball as he won the Big Ten’s Player of the Year honors.
In fact, that slash line has Shaw arguing that a certain level of failure at the Major-League level is baked in, and that it will help him persevere through tough times.
“In college, people hit .350 and .400, and that’s normal. In the big leagues, you hit .250 and .300, and that’s normal,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure up here that I don’t understand yet. There’s the fans and the community and everything that I’ll eventually learn, but when it comes to baseball, people are failing a lot more in the big leagues than they are in college, so for me it’s a great opportunity for me to fail and learn and see what you can make of it.”
Shaw signed his contract with the Cubs this week, and will likely learn his first minor-league assignment in the coming days.