Cubs Remain Optimistic Fortunes Will Change as Offensive Slide Continues

Though they remain in a virtual tie for the National League’s top Wild Card spot, the Cubs have lost ground to both the Brewers at the top of the division and the Reds below them. Even the Cardinals are still lurking back in fourth place, just four games out of a postseason berth. And while things could be worse — just look at the Mets and Yankees — it’s tough to watch a team that scored seemingly at will in the early going lose its offensive identity.

Or maybe it’s better to say the Cubs have simply misplaced their bats, kind of like me with my wallet or keys. I’m reminded of rap icon Eminem, who, following an overdose on sleeping pills and painkillers several years ago, awoke in a hospital bed unable to move. He had to relearn how to walk, talk, and rhyme again, an arduous process that came with its share of fits and starts. That analogy might not land with as many of you as I’d hoped when it first came to me, but it makes sense to me as a massive fan of both parties.

As an aside, it was very interesting to explore the nature of various other fans’ attachment to Em in STANS, the limited-run documentary released through AMC Theaters. It’s sort of like taking the top 1% of the die-hards at Cubs Convention, those folks who make even the most dedicated followers look like they fell off the bandwagon. Without casting aspersions, there’s a fine line between stanning, as it were, and being Stan.

The problem of late is that the Cubs aren’t even giving us the Relapse album with those weird accents Eminem himself has publicly disavowed on multiple occasions. That Recovery joint needs to be on the way ASAP. The good news is that, like my wallet or keys, that offensive juggernaut is still lurking somewhere.

“The optimism is just we’ve got good hitters, and we’ve scored a lot of runs this year and they’ve done a lot of damage this year,” Craig Counsell said after Tuesday’s loss in Toronto. “There’s no ‘Woe is me’ here and ‘Oh no.’ This is baseball and you gotta go have good at-bats whatever the situation is, and keep grinding through ’em.

“It starts with swinging at the right pitches. There’s no question, that’s where it starts. And that’s the foundation of it, and we are still doing that. We gotta get some to fall and we gotta get some hits in the right spot.”

Through the first half of the season, the Cubs were scoring 5.33 runs per game, barely behind the Dodgers for most in MLB. Their 142 homers trailed only LA (145) and the Yankees (151), and their 116 wRC+ tied them with the Dodgers for second behind the Bronx Bombers (119). The Cubs did all of that with a .287 BABIP that was three points below league average and 13 below what is typically considered the norm.

Even allowing for them playing fewer second-half games (22) than any team but the Mets, the Cubs currently sit 29th in MLB with 88 runs scored. That’s four runs per game, a 25% drop from their earlier production. And it’s only that good because they’ve punctuated otherwise arid offensive stretches with big outbursts. Their 25 home runs rank 22nd as the top half of the lineup has basically forgotten how to hit for power.

Bad luck has been a small factor, with the Cubs’ .278 BABIP sitting below their first-half mark and 14 points below the rest of the league since the break. Just look at Nico Hoerner on Tuesday. He was robbed of a hit on a sliding grab by Nathan Lukes, then on a grounder deep in the hole that required an incredible throw by Bo Bichette to a surprisingly limber Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at first, then on a hard liner to Bichette late in the game.

Overall, though, Hoerner’s .329 BABIP in the second half indicates he’s getting the benefit of the doubt from the baseball gods more frequently than most. As for his teammates, well, that’s a different story. On the whole, the Cubs look like a team that is playing tight and actively trying not to make mistakes. That last bit might sound like a good thing, but it’s the exact opposite if failure — even the avoidance of it — is at the top of your mind.

The frustration is evident multiple times a night, whether it’s Kyle Tucker wearing a lost expression after grounding out to the right side like a latter-day Jason Heyward or Pete Crow-Armstrong swinging through yet another strike. What’s so difficult to fathom about PCA’s slump is that he’s actually chasing fewer balls. Many believed early on that his free-swinging ways would catch up to him as pitchers stopped throwing him anything close. Instead, he’s struggling with stuff he should be salivating over.

“I mean, hitting’s hard,” Crow-Armstrong deadpanned. “But that’s part of our identity is calling ourselves a hitter, and you’ve gotta find a way to take pride in the good and bad. You gotta take pride in still owning the fact that we’re all major league baseball players, and a part of a really good offense that dominated for all year until a couple weeks ago.”

For all the hand-wringing about his .212 average, Tucker is still drawing walks at nearly a 20% clip to maintain a 106 wRC+ and incredible .381 on-base percentage in the second half. PCA is down to an 82 wRC+ with a .250 OBP, massive departures from his early numbers. And when he’s batting fourth or fifth in the order, that diminished production is magnified. Seiya Suzuki is lagging further behind with a 74 wRC+, and Michael Busch brings up the caboose with a 51 wRC+ that tells us he’s barely performing at half the league-average rate.

It doesn’t help that Willi Castro, who was supposed to have been a big upgrade to the bench, has posted a 17 wRC+ through 27 plate appearances so far. We can talk about small samples all we like, but it’s never a good thing when your starters are playing worse than replacement players and your replacement players are magnitudes of order worse. For the sake of reference, Jon Berti and Vidal Bruján were designated for assignment after putting up identical marks of 42 wRC+ over limited playing time.

For what it’s worth, Bruján is up to a 73 wRC+ by going 2-for-5 with four walks and two runs scored over three games with the Orioles and Braves since the Cubs cut him loose. That’s not a hindsight thing, just kinda funny.

At the risk of being overly reductive, it feels like this whole thing could turn around in just a game or two with the right shift in momentum and/or approach. We saw the Cubs trying to force the issue a little on the bases last night, something I’ve been begging them to do for a while now, and it’s well past the point where any of this can be considered normal. The bats have to bust out again soon because, well, they can’t not.

“We’re giving ourselves some opportunities throughout the game, and just not able to capitalize right now,” Dansby Swanson rationalized. “It’s one of those things where all it really takes is one swing and everyone kinda gets rolling again as a group. It can be very contagious, hitting can be very contagious, and we just gotta go make that happen.”

Losing is also a disease, as contagious as polio or syphilis or the bubonic plague…attacking one, but infecting all.  Ah, but curable. In this case, that cure has something to do with removing the crushing weight of expectation from their shoulders and finding a way to play loose for the first time in a few weeks. Easier said than done.