These are the days when I’m super jealous of Al. A June afternoon at the park while the Cubs are playing pinball. To be fair, he’s watched a metric ton of bad baseball this year (and nine walk-offs too!). I’m sure I’m suffering from some recency bias, but this has felt like the weirdest ever season of Cub baseball. There doesn’t feel like any middle ground with this team. Epic wins. Terrible losses. So little ho hum. Typical baseball somewhere in my head is a 5-2 game or a 4-3 game. The Cubs don’t
really play those games.
When you blog about baseball regularly, you start organizing your thoughts as the game unfolds. I remember thinking about how gifted this team is offensively. A 16-2 win doesn’t feel wacky. Because this offense is gifted. The offense jumped all over a talented pitcher on an afternoon when he just wasn’t executing. Then in the second act, they jumped all over the back half of the Blue Jays bullpen, forced to cover just too many innings.
But then I argued with myself. Is the offense actually gifted? Your mileage may vary. In the context I’m using it, gifted is a term of art, not necessarily a commonly accepted concept. In my head, a gifted offense is one that can, with some consistency, beat good pitching and teams. I would go a step down with the offense. They are a talented offense. But not gifted. A talented team has the capability of sustaining offense and producing lopsided scores with some frequency.
That collective skill is one of the reasons this team has so many come from behind wins. When this team faces a struggling pitcher, they tend to bury it. They piece together good plate appearance after good plate appearance. But they do also appear to struggle against good pitching, of any skill level, when it is executing well. I think of a game recently when they faced a young starting pitcher who’d yet to find any success at the major league level and couldn’t get anything going. I remember a pitcher (twice) recently who had pretty universally struggled all year long and not being able to mount any consistent offense.
I see Pete Crow-Armstrong as a gifted hitter. I see Michael Busch as a gifted hitter. I’m not super familiar with his body of work, but I believe Alex Bregman is historically a gifted hitter. To date, it looks like father time is winning the fight there and he is merely a talented hitter. Seiya Suzuki, Ian Happ, Carson Kelly, Nico Hoerner. Talented. But not gifted. It doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes come through against a pitcher who’s throwing well. But they don’t do so consistently. When the gameplan against them gets around the league, they may struggle for days and weeks at a time. We are watching so much of that happening.
This team has nowhere near enough starting pitching to stay competitive in a low-scoring environment. This team needs to score runs consistently. In an odd way, I think that any push that is going to be made by this team is going to have to come from the offensive side of things. Be it internal or external, I think that’s where this team can find a higher gear. This is why they have to continue to find spots for Matt Shaw and Pedro Ramirez. They’ve got to get Moisés Ballesteros right. Somewhere, they have to find more offense.
They score enough runs on the good days. When the other pitcher falters, this team pounces. But this team has to find more production on those days when the other guy is really executing. Offense has a cumulative effect. Success at the plate creates traffic on the bases. You can’t shift your defense in the same ways when runners are on base. You have to be more concerned about making the kind of mistake that can lead to an instant crooked number. You throw more pitches. You throw more pitches at max effort. That can wear you down. A team playing on a lead pitches different, defends different, hits different. It effects which relievers you use. It effects how aggressively you deploy your bullpen.
The Cubs have had such a cumulative negative effect over the last month plus. They are always behind. It forces their pitchers to have to try to be a little too perfect. It allows opposing pitchers to work a little more aggressively. Hitters press. Pitchers press. This team has become such a momentum team. But there are many different times of momentum. They roll hard when they roll. They fall harder when they don’t. We saw it one day last week. They had a wild come from behind win. Then they allowed so many runs early that there was no carryover what’s so ever.
The opportunity is still there. I don’t know where they could possibly find much more pitching. A healthy return for Matthew Boyd and/or Justin Steele, I guess. I think they’d have to give up too much to add meaningful amounts of pitching. But maybe if they could find enough offense, it would take some stress off of their pitchers. This team averages just under 4.75 runs per game. They are eighth in MLB in runs. To be fair, three of the teams ahead of them have done it in less games as have a few of the teams just behind them. But it’s not a wild exaggeration that this team has been one of the highest scoring teams. It’s all about consistency.
To be fair, I bet the vast majority of all of the teams feel that they need more consistency. So this isn’t a grand concept. It also isn’t a lever that can just be flipped. If it could, more teams would find it. But this team really does have one of the deepest groups of position players. That’s why sites like Fangraphs have consistently ranked them among the highest for expected WAR amongst the position player group. Of course, a significant chunk of that comes from excellent defense by so many of them. Almost every player is contributing positive defensive value. Now they just have to carry some of that over onto the offensive side. Or, sacrifice a little defense, at times, for offense.
Positives:
- Pete Crow-Armstrong continues to lead the way. Three hits, two walks. A run, a run batted in, two steals. He jammed a box score. As I’m writing this, he sits 22nd in all of MLB in OPS.
- Seiya Suzuki had three hits and a walk. Among his hits was a double. He drove in two runs and scored two more.
- Carson Kelly had two hits and drew two walks. Among his hits was a grand slam. He scored three times.
- Nico Hoerner had three hits, one a double. He scored a run.
- Ben Brown, two runs allowed over six innings.
I could go on and on. Michael Conforto was really the only Cub who played who didn’t have some meaningful contribution. He only batted once.
Game 76, June 19: Cubs 16, Blue Jays 2 (40-36)
Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.
THREE HEROES:
- Superhero: Carson Kelly (.182). 2-4, HR, 2 BB, 6 RBI, 3 R
- Hero: Seiya Suzuki (.119). 3-5, 2B, BB, 2 RBI, 2 R
- Sidekick: Ben Brown (.087). 6 IP, 22 BF, 4 H, 0 BB, 2 ER, 4 K (W 4-2)
THREE GOATS:
- Billy Goat: Nico Hoerner (-.043). 3-6, 2B, R
- Goat: Michael Busch (-.011). 1-5, BB
- Kid: Michael Conforto* (.000). 0-1
*Michael Conforto draws the short stick. In reality, the Cubs emptied the bench and their lower leverage relievers. Six total players participated in a time in the game where there was basically no leverage and the teams were playing out the string. Three of them were pitchers who threw a scoreless inning. Two of them were hitters who had hits and run(s) driven in off of the bench. Michael was the one who would have a negative WPA under ordinary circumstances, however slight.
WPA Play of the Game: Carson Kelly with the rare first inning grand slam. It came with two outs and extended the Cubs lead to six. (.182)
Blue Jays Play of the Game: Kevin Gaussman’s first inning strikeout of Nico Hoerner with the bases loaded and one out, the Cubs already up two. This play was right before the grand slam. (.050)
*There were 21 plays in this game that registered no WPA score — positive or negative — because the game was essentially already over for all WPA purposes.
Cubs Player of the Game:
Game 75 Winner: Matt Shaw 88-55 over Javier Assad (159 total votes).
Rizzo Award Standings: (Top 5/Bottom 5)
The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.
- Michael Busch +25
- Ben Brown +13.5
- Pete Crow-Armstrong +13
- Carson Kelly +10.5
- Michael Conforto +9
- Edward Cabrera -9.5
- Phil Maton -10
- Caleb Thielbar/Dansby Swanson -11
- Seiya Suzuki -19.5
Up Next: Game two of the three-game series Saturday afternoon. The Cubs look to win for their seventh time in nine games. Colin Rea (5-5, 5.45) gets the start for the Cubs. Colin is 0-2 with a 7.98 over three June starts to date. Our old pal Patrick Corbin (2-3, 4.57). The veteran lefty has 14 career appearances versus the Cubs, 13 of them starts (5-2, 4.60). The Cubs are 8-10 against left-handed starters, despite having the sixth highest OPS versus lefties of all MLB teams.
