Article: The Numbers and the Necessity Behind the Cubs' Great At-Bats This Weekend

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Facing as stern an early test as the season can offer, the Chicago Cubs answered with an awesome offensive display this weekend against the Dodgers. It was their approach at the plate that stood out most.

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports

You can’t glean a ton from a three-game series early in the year. You can glean even less when the series finale is plagued by the field conditions that the weather wrought on a Sunday afternoon at Wrigley Field. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to look at the outcomes of the weekend set against the Los Angeles Dodgers and not get excited about the prospects for this Chicago Cubs team.

After all, this was the measuring stick at this point in the year. With all due respect to the defending champions down in Texas, it was the Dodgers who acquired seemingly everyone over the winter, started 7-2, and featured an early +15 run differential heading into the weekend. The Dodgers, with Mookie Betts looking like the best player in baseball and sporting massive stuff from their starters on the mound. You don’t put too much stock into a series at this juncture, but you also want to see how your team can hang.

Early on, it didn’t look great. With only modest additions over the winter, nobody places the Cubs within the upper tier of the league. A potential NL Central division champion? Sure. But that’s kind of where it ends. That perception was compounded by the Dodgers tagging Kyle Hendricks for a pair of runs in the first inning on Friday, before Bobby Miller promptly struck out the side in the bottom half of the inning.

The vibe at that point was, “Well, yeah, this is kind of how this will probably go.” Almost immediately, however, the Cubs shifted the flow of the game back in their favor (he said, trying to avoid using the word momentum at all costs). The offense kept putting in the work on Friday, even as the Dodgers kept banging at the door of a comeback. Even a loss on Saturday couldn’t dampen the home nine, so the rain tried to do so on Sunday. Still, the Cubs thumped Los Angeles up and down the box score.

Taking two of three from the Dodgers – at any point in the year – adds a certain level of moral victory to the black-and-white one that goes into the standings. Stealing one would’ve done so. Taking two in the most assertive fashion possible feeds into an unquantifiable level of confidence.

If we are to quantify it, though, and lean into the idea that the Cubs put on an auspicious display over the weekend, we can attribute that all almost directly to the quality of their plate appearances. Throughout the lineup, the team was an absolute nightmare for Dodger pitchers to deal with.

On Friday, Miller ended up throwing 58 pitches in 1 2/3 innings. He didn’t escape the second, after the Cubs put it on him. Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw 80 pitches across five frames (though dazzling ones) on Saturday. To close out the weekend, they made Gavin Stone throw 77 in just three innings of work. In 9 2/3 innings – which, on its own merit, says something about the Cubs throughout the weekend – Dodgers starters threw 215 pitches. 

It wasn’t so much that the Cubs were able to cash in their high-level plate discipline for walks. Sure, they walked six times on Friday, but then only matched that in the final two games of the series combined. What they did, instead, was parlay that approach into consistent, high-quality contact. Their Hard Hit% in the three games went 37.0, 54.5, and 43.5. The rate in the second and third games far exceeded that of the Dodgers’ all-world lineup.

Obviously, that’s impressive on its own. There’s a conversation to be had about the Cubs’ approach to pitching against the LA lineup on the other side, but zeroing in on the team’s own lineup really speaks to what this team is attempting to do at the plate. While that three-game sample demonstrated their commitment to patience, the broader picture thus far speaks to exactly the same concept.

The Cubs lead the league in walk rate, with a 12.7% mark ahead of the second-place New York Yankees and their 12.1% clip. Their on-base percentage is tied with Texas for tops in the league. Only the Kansas City Royals (38.7) & Los Angeles Angels (37.9) are making hard contact at a higher rate than the Cubs (36.4), and that's on a per-batted ball basis, rather than a per-plate appearance one. The North Siders are seeing 3.94 pitches per plate appearance, which is above the league average.

The individual standouts further this narrative. Ian Happ is at 4.6 pitches per trip to the dish, walking at a rate of 16.3%, and reaching base at a .442 clip. Dansby Swanson (4.5), Michael Busch (4.2), and Seiya Suzuki (4.1) are all well above the individual average mark for P/PA (3.9). All four are in the top 35 among 207 qualifying position players in Hard Hit%. Simply put, the respective approaches that we saw from Cubs hitters over the weekend were microcosms of what they’ve turned in through the first week-plus of regular season action.

That’s exactly what they need to do on that side of the ball. We’ve (I’ve?) spilled a lot of digital ink discussing how the Cubs need to be excellent on defense, in order to support a largely soft-tossing pitching staff. Similarly, the offense needs to bring a “grind” approach to their plate appearances in order to generate offense for a group that isn’t as stocked with raw talent or star power as several others throughout the league. Such an approach is how this team is capable of hanging around with some of the very best in the league. That level of diligence manifesting as confidence in their plate appearances is a nightmare for opposing pitchers; the Dodgers are now keenly aware of this, and the Cubs have an opportunity to continue the trend against at least three or four additional contenders through the rest of the month.

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Whose at-bats have stood out to you most in the season's first 10 days? What do you still want to see the team do better or differently? Join the conversation below, as we await a late game for the Cubs on the West Coast.

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