Fantasy Baseball: Wrigley Field could spell trouble for Alex Bregman, the Cubs' latest free agent signing

Thus far in his career, Alex Bregman has had the good fortune of playing in two of the most opportune venues for pull-side right-handed power: Daikin Park and Fenway Park. Now, he'll get a taste of the opposite.

Of course, there are downstream effects to his five-year, $175 million contract, such as what it will mean for Matt Shaw's playing time (could a Nico Hoerner trade be in the offing?), but the most pressing matter for Fantasy Baseball is what it means for Bregman himself.

Alex Bregman 3B BOS Boston • #2 • Age: 31 2025 Stats AVG .273 HR 18 OPS .821 AB 433 BB 51 K 70

The impact that Wrigley Field could have on his home run output is difficult to ascertain through familiar metrics like xHR, which struggles to account for the venue's ever-windy conditions and unusual fence shape, but Isaac Paredes serves as a useful test case. What happens when a player who relies on extreme pull tendencies for his power is subjected to the ballpark with the deepest outfield corners -- namely, going from the one pictured on the left below to the one pictured on the right?

Predictably, it doesn't go well. See how the Wrigley Field fence actually moves back as it nears the corners? That makes for 40 extra feet at the foul pole around which Paredes lives, and those 40 extra feet made a world of difference. Paredes hit .223 with three homers and a .633 OPS in his 52 games for the Cubs late in 2024.

But then what happened when Paredes returned to a ballpark well-suited for his swing -- incidentally, the same one where Bregman has spent the majority of his career? Why, he went on to deliver a very Bregman-like stat line: .254 with 20 homers and a .809 OPS in the 102 games that he was healthy.

So if Paredes produces much like Bregman in Houston, what are the chances Bregman will produce much like Paredes in Chicago?

I don't want to overstate the case. I'd be reckless for doing so given the dissimilar stature of the two players. But Paredes and Bregman are hitters of a similar kind, both relying on optimal angles rather than optimal impact to deliver their home runs. Bregman hits the ball harder than Paredes, sure, but his exit velocities still typically rank in the lower half the of league. His pull tendencies aren't as extreme as Paredes', but ... well, they're pretty extreme:

Notice that most of those black dots are going into the same protruded corner that ruined Paredes in Chicago.

Now, the obvious counter for this admittedly bearish outlook would be Statcast, which estimates that Bregman would have actually hit one more home run if he had played every game at Wrigley Field last year, but I've already mentioned the difficulties in modeling home runs at that particular venue. We've discussed the shape of the fence, which defies convention by becoming deeper at points where every other fence becomes shallower, but the trickier variable than that, even, is the wind.

Located on the Lake Michigan side of the Windy City, Wrigley Field is impacted more by wind than any other venue. Historically, it's been a boon for hitters, but more recent patterns have seen the wind blow in more often than out. The actual 2025 count is 51 games "in" and 19 games "out," according to Jesse Rogers of ESPN.

If it's fringe power to begin with, it's likely to be warning track power against 15 mph headwinds.

Given his hitting profile and the way it's perfectly suited for the past venues he's called home, I've feared the day when Bregman, a longtime favorite of mine in Fantasy, played half his games at a more ordinary venue. This one isn't even ordinary but perhaps the worst-case scenario. Maybe his hitting instincts and fiercely competitive nature will elevate him beyond his batted-ball tendencies, perhaps even reshaping them to his new circumstances. Maybe the wind patterns will change at Wrigley or he'll be so good on the road that none of these concerns end up mattering.

But seeing as Bregman has been bleeding value over the past few years, going from an early-round mainstay to more of a mid-round fallback option in most scoring formats, I think we've all sensed him teetering on the edge of Fantasy significance. This venue change seems consequential enough to topple him over, and so for the first time ever in his long career, I'm saying I'm out on Bregman, at least if he continues to be drafted in the 120 range. Frankly, I'd rather have Paredes.