Cubs’ Carson Kelly Has Been On Another Level At the Plate

Carson Kelly has been one of the best hitters, not just on the Chicago Cubs but in all of baseball, so far in the 2025 season.

Kelly ended Friday tied for 19th in Wins Above Replacement (1.5, per FanGraphs), racked up in just 23 games this season. He’s one of four players with at least 1.2 fWAR who’ve played less than 30 games. He’s the only one to play fewer than 28, showing just how valuable he’s been.

He doesn’t even have enough plate appearance to be considered a qualified hitter. Yet, he’s produced like the best in the game when he’s on the field. Here’s where Kelly ranked after Friday, among hitters with at least 80 plate appearances:

• wRC+: 228 (second)

• OPS: 1.211 (second)

• wOBA: .504 (second)

• ISO: .406 (first)

• BB%: 20.2 percent (fourth)

• K%: 11.2 percent (16th)

That doesn’t include some of Kelly’s counting stats. He finished Friday tied for 24th in home runs (eight) and tied for 32nd in RBIs (23). Sure, those rankings don’t look spectacular. But consider that all but six players ahead of Kelly in homers have at least 50 more plate appearances than his 89, and of those ahead of him in RBIs, all but four.

How is Carson Kelly doing it?

For one, his plate discipline stats have mostly improved from the last few seasons.

According to Statcast, Kelly has only swung at 14.6 percent of pitches out of the zone, though he’s made contact on those 69 percent of the time. He’s swung at 68.9 percent of pitches in the zone, and he’s made contact 85.2 percent of the time. Overall, he’s got an 82.3 percent contact rate. Those are at least right around the same if not better than his seasonal marks since 2019 (his out-of-zone rates are massive improvements).

Statcast also loves Kelly’s underlying metrics. Entering Saturday, there was darker red (meaning well above-average) all over his Baseball Savant page. Take a look for yourself:

Kelly is hitting ball harder than in any other season. His average exit velocity would be the highest of his career. Same with his barrel and hard-hit rates — by a long shot.

That certainly looks like someone seeing the ball extremely well. Whether you’re looking at the numbers or just watching Kelly’s at-bats, that’s been pretty clear to see.

Even since he moved up in the order, Kelly has done a nice job. He had wRC+ marks of 172 when hitting eighth (28 PAs) and 326 when hitting ninth (31 PAs).

In the cleanup spot, he still posted a 240 wRC+ (19 PAs). His smallest sample is just 11 PAs hitting fifth, and thanks to an 0-for-3 night Friday, that’s down to a 72 wRC+. But overall, the production has been there, regardless of his spot in the lineup.

Is this sustainable?

That’s the ultimate question surrounding Kelly as a hitter right now.

The height of his numbers likely aren’t, since they’re just far beyond what most of the major leagues’ best hitters are doing.

Only five hitters with at least 80 plate appearances after Friday have at least a 200 wRC+, and only 10 have at least a 170. Not on that list are the likes of his teammate Kyle Tucker (161), the Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr. (163) and the Mets’ Juan Soto (150), three star-level bats.

None of Kelly’s first nine seasons resulted in star-level production. He only finished above league-average in wRC+ in his 19 (107) and ’21 (104) seasons. It’s unrealistic to think he stays at this level all season.

But perhaps his plate adjustments — Marquee Sports Network recently detailed some he made after studying Barry Bonds — allow him to maintain a higher level of production than in previous years. Even if his numbers regress the deeper he gets into the season, that doesn’t mean they have to fall back to where he’s been in the past.

We’ll have to see how the rest of the season plays out, of course. All that matters now is the Cubs’ catchers (Kelly and Miguel Amaya, who’s produced a 109 wRC+ of his own) make up one of the top catching groups in baseball. In both wRC+ (168) and fWAR (2.0), Cubs catchers rank second in MLB.

If they can stay in that upper-tier of catcher production, it won’t matter what Kelly’s numbers look like at the end of season. That would be a massive improvement on what they got from the position a year ago.