Why Protein Timing, Proper Recovery Matter More Now Than Ever for Cubs
I don’t ever remember hearing a word about macros when I was younger, let alone having access to all manner of supplements like we do today. Outside of being presented with the food pyramid and understanding that vegetables should be part of dinner, we just ate whatever was available. We’re talking about a time when any cereal that wasn’t coated in three layers of sugar was only for grown-ups whose doctors had forced them to clean up their diets.
It wasn’t much different for big leaguers, as the typical weight room might have had a stationary bike and the pregame spread consisted of coffee and doughnuts. Jim Deshaies recently joked during the broadcast that there was almost a revolt when the Astros’ strength and conditioning coach introduced medicine balls to the players in the late 80s. Times have changed, and nutrition is at the forefront of how organizations are trying to gain an advantage.
It’s not just the pros and college levels, either; young kids and their families are far more aware of fitness and nutrition than ever before. That’s certainly been the case for us as we have navigated through travel and high school baseball with an eye on playing in college as well. Making sure my son is fueling himself well has been a priority, with adequate protein intake standing out as one of the biggest keys.
That’s why I was excited to partner with Naked Nutrition to look at how nutrition, particularly protein supplementation, is helpful for MLB teams. We have turned down a lot of sponsorship or partnership offers in the past because we don’t believe in the brands, or because they’re really just looking to drop a link to a gambling site into an article. Not the case here, as my son and I actually use Naked Nutrition’s protein and creatine products.
I felt like this topic was both timely and informative, so I’m happy to share it with you now.
The Cubs will enter the holiday weekend battling the Phillies for the top NL Wild Card spot while keeping their distance from the Diamondbacks and Padres, so every game on the schedule now carries real weight. Fans watching the standings tighten will focus on bullpen usage, lineup construction, and who Craig Counsell trots out in a given series. Less visible, but arguably just as important to how fresh this roster looks in the season’s final weeks, is something happening entirely away from the ballpark: whether players are actually fueling their bodies well enough to hold up through the grind of a pennant race.
Baseball’s 162-game schedule creates a genuinely different nutritional challenge than almost any other major American sport, and the Cubs’ current stretch is a good example of exactly why. A road trip to Miami sandwiched between home and away series against the Brewers, the division rival Chicago has been chasing all the way into the season’s final weeks, leaves very little room for the kind of recovery a body gets during a normal week. A team asking its players to recover, repair, and perform on a near-daily basis through a playoff push benefits enormously from consistent, well-distributed nutrition rather than whatever happens to be convenient on a given travel day.
This kind of grind is part of why September call-ups and roster depth become such a storyline every year, the Cubs included. Younger players stepping into larger roles late in the season are often managing a jump in game frequency and travel demand that their bodies have not fully adapted to yet, on top of the pressure of a genuine playoff race.
Chicago finished 2025 with 92 wins and its first playoff berth in years, and this year’s roster has spent the entire second half defending a Wild Card position rather than chasing one from behind. That kind of sustained pressure across the full second half of a season adds a mental and physical load on top of the schedule itself, one that makes the small, controllable details of recovery matter even more than they would during a less consequential stretch of games.
This is part of why a reliable, easy-to-distribute protein source has become such a practical tool for players managing a long, grinding season like the one the Cubs are in the middle of right now. A shake built around fast-digesting whey protein powder gives a player an easy way to hit an additional protein dose between meals without needing to prepare or carry an extra full meal through a stadium or an airport, a real consideration on a getaway day out of Wrigley Field or a quick turnaround into a road series. Players increasingly build this kind of supplementation directly into a daily routine specifically because it fits into the gaps a packed September schedule leaves between actual meals.
The research behind why distribution pattern matters, not just total daily intake, is specific and worth understanding directly. A study published in The Journal of Physiology had resistance-trained men consume 80 grams of whey protein across a 12-hour recovery period following exercise, divided into one of three patterns: two large 40-gram doses, four moderate 20-gram doses spaced three hours apart, or eight small 10-gram doses spaced roughly every 90 minutes. The researchers found the four-dose pattern, spaced evenly through the day, produced the greatest increase in muscle protein synthesis. Outperforming both the two large doses and the eight small doses indicated that both under- and over-dosing a single feeding can blunt the body’s response compared to a well-spaced, moderate pattern.
That finding has real practical implications for how the Cubs can structure meals and shakes across this demanding stretch. Two enormous meals a day, a common pattern for players juggling early workouts, batting practice, and a night game at Wrigley followed by a flight, may not support muscle repair as effectively as the same total protein spread across four smaller, well-timed servings. The Cubs’ remaining schedule mixes exactly the kind of stretches where this distinction matters most: home stands against division rivals immediately followed by short road trips, then back home again before the calendar flips to October. Every one of those
transitions is a moment where a consistent, well-timed nutrition routine either holds up or quietly slips.
An extensive injured list has been part of the story all season for Chicago, and injury prevention has long been the white whale of competitive sports. While nutrition is only one small piece of a much larger picture that includes training load, mechanics, and simple bad luck, the cumulative physical toll of a 162-game schedule is real and well documented regardless of which specific players are affected in a given year. Keeping a roster’s nutrition dialed in during the stretch run is one of the more controllable variables a team actually has influence over when it comes to maintaining good health.
Doubleheaders and getaway days present an even more concentrated version of this challenge, because they require a player’s body to recover and refuel between games separated by only a short break rather than a full night’s rest. Players who have built a consistent protein distribution habit across a normal week tend to handle this kind of compressed schedule with less noticeable drop-off than those relying purely on whatever food happens to be available in the clubhouse that day.
Age adds another layer to this picture for a roster mixing established veterans with younger contributors, since research on muscle protein synthesis generally shows that recovery capacity slows somewhat with age. That makes consistent, well-timed protein intake more important for a player in his 30s, like Alex Bregman, than it was earlier in his career. A veteran managing a long career increasingly treats nutrition timing as seriously as any other part of an in-season routine, especially in a season where every game down the stretch matters this much.
Team nutritionists across the league have absorbed this research directly into how clubhouses are stocked today, with prepared snacks and shakes now available at multiple points throughout a game day rather than a single pregame and postgame spread. This shift reflects a broader recognition that a playoff push like the one the Cubs
are in right now rewards consistency built day by day over a handful of well-planned meals scattered across the week.
None of this means total daily protein intake stops mattering, since hitting an adequate overall number remains the foundation everything else is built upon. It simply means that for a team trying to hold off the Phillies and others through the final weeks of September to lock up a playoff spot, how protein gets distributed across each day may matter the same as how much of it a player eats in the first place. That kind of detail is easy to overlook in a race this tight where every marginal edge is worth chasing down.
With the Cubs looking to turn a Wild Card spot into a deeper October run than last year, the margins between finishing the season fresh and finishing it running on fumes are incredibly thin. Getting it done means executing on exactly the kind of small, unglamorous details that rarely make a highlight package but often decide which teams are still playing baseball in November.
