Ian Happ on Matt Shaw’s Glove Gaffe: 'The Guy Hasn’t Played a Lot of Outfield’

Matt Shaw was displaced in the offseason after the Chicago Cubs committed to a five-year deal to have Alex Bregman play third base.

Shaw is now trying his hand at being a utility player. Most of his recent experience is on the left side of the infield at shortstop and third base. Moving to the outfield, even on an occasional basis, is an adjustment.

Plus, it turns out there is a glove for that.

Just as catchers have their own gloves and first basemen have their own gloves, outfielders tend to have their own gloves. For help, Shaw went to Gold Glove-winning teammate Ian Happ for help.

Matt Shaw | Michael McLoone-Imagn Images

Choosing the perfect glove

As Shaw told MLB.com, he asked Happ — who came up in the system doing the same things that Shaw is doing now — about what size glove he needed. Turns out Shaw wasn’t clear on the size.

“I asked him about a certain glove length that I should get in the outfield,” Shaw said. “I said like 14.5 [inches] or something, and he informed me that there’s no such thing as a 14.5-sized glove. So that was helpful.”

Turns out Shaw was way off the mark. Outfielders typically use a glove that is 12.5 to 12.75 inches long. The difference is the depth of the pocket of the glove. Outfielders like them deeper because they tend to need the extra space to make diving catches and don’t have to quickly get the ball out of their glove like an infielder.

Happ set him straight.

“The guy hasn’t played a lot of outfield,” Happ said. “He didn’t even know what size the glove was. So, I helped there. It’s the little things, you know?”

Happ is a four-time Gold Glove winner in left field. Shaw hasn’t won a Gold Glove, but he was a Gold Glove finalist at third base last year after a rocky start taking over as a rookie. His bat didn’t cooperate early in the season, and he had to go back to Triple-A Iowa to refine his swing.

The slash still didn’t look great by season’s end. It sat at .226/.295/.394 with 13 home runs and 44 RBI. The belief entering the offseason was that Shaw could take a jump in his second season. He can, but now he’ll have to do so in a utility role.

Chicago is not intent on trading him in the wake of their long-term commitment to Bregman. They believe that Shaw can grow into the role of being a utility player with a big bat and five years of team control remaining.

He just needs to learn how play the outfield with the right glove first.

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