As we head into the first week of August, I thought I’d take a look at the performance the Cubs have gotten out of their different position players, as opposed to league average at those positions. The numbers aren’t surprising. The Cubs have gotten good offensive production out of first base, center field and shortstop, especially, and terrible production out of second base. Right field and left field have been roughly average for those positions, but since Soriano and Bradley haven’t been very good on defense, they haven’t been much of a positive.

Here’s what the performance every position has given the Cubs has looked like. This is broken down by games played at a position - so Ramirez’s games at third base are balanced against Fontenot’s games there. (note: a reader has pointed out that the headings are reversed in the table below the graph - the first row is the Cubs’ performance, the second row is the league average for that position. We’ll fix the graph later in the day.)

We can also break it down by the regular at each position, which might be better going forward–we can expect Soto to play the majority of the games at catcher going forward, and Ramirez to play most games at third, for example. That graph is a little different. I’ve included Koyie Hill at catcher, too, just because he looks to continue playing a decent amount:

Ramirez has a limited number of plate appearances, but has been absolutely killing the ball. Of course he won’t be able to continue hitting quite as well, but he’s a very good third baseman. In fact, among Cubs regulars, only Soriano and Fontenot have been below their position’s averages over the course of the season. Unfortunately, the Cubs have had to use plenty of backups, too - every Koyie Hill plate appearance is even farther below the average for catchers than Soto is above it.

Still, this graph confirms what we expected at the start of the season - for the most part, the Cubs have a very good lineup. We’ll see where they finish, but they do get very good production out of their regular position players.