Article: This Week In Cubs Baseball: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

[Josh Illes]

A red-hot start to the week and one of the worst losses in franchise history make this week’s recap a bittersweet. What should be cause for celebration of a team headed in an upward trajectory feels a bit more like a culmination of all the red flags that we have seen coming from afar from a team built to compete but not yet dominate. This week has been about the best example of how discerning fans can disagree whether this Cubs team has turned a corner or is still just the same old Cubs from the past couple of seasons.

Record Last Week: 4-2 (17-11 overall)
Runs Scored: 25
Runs Surrendered: 29
Standing: 2nd in NL Central (0.5 GB)

Transactions
04/28/24 Chicago Cubs placed LHP Jordan Wicks on the 15-day injured list. Left forearm strain.

04/28/24 Chicago Cubs selected the contract of LHP Richard Lovelady from Iowa Cubs.

04/28/24 Chicago Cubs optioned LHP Luke Little to Iowa Cubs.

04/28/24 Chicago Cubs recalled RHP Daniel Palencia from Iowa Cubs.

04/27/24 Chicago Cubs signed free agent RHP Dan Straily to a minor league contract.

04/27/24 Chicago Cubs traded 1B Garrett Cooper to Boston Red Sox for cash.

04/25/24 Chicago Cubs signed free agent RHP Nico Zeglin to a minor league contract.

04/24/24 Chicago Cubs placed 1B Cody Bellinger on the 10-day injured list. Right rib fracture.

04/24/24 Chicago Cubs recalled OF Pete Crow-Armstrong from Iowa Cubs.

04/23/24 Chicago Cubs placed RHP Kyle Hendricks on the 15-day injured list. Low back strain.

04/23/24 Chicago Cubs designated 1B Garrett Cooper for assignment.

04/23/24 Chicago Cubs placed LHP Drew Smyly on the 15-day injured list retroactive to April 22, 2024. Right hip impingement.

04/23/24 Chicago Cubs recalled RHP Hayden Wesneski from Iowa Cubs.

04/23/24 Chicago Cubs recalled LHP Luke Little from Iowa Cubs.

04/23/24 Chicago Cubs recalled 1B Matt Mervis from Iowa Cubs.

Game Recaps
Tuesday, April 23rd. Cubs defeat Astros 7-2

• Mike Tauchman solidified himself as the best 4th outfielder in MLB with this 2 Home run, 4 RBI outing
• Jordan Wicks goes six innings to get the quality start
• The Cubs scored 5 runs in the 1st inning which is the most they’ve scored in the 1st inning all year
• Cody Bellinger ran into the brick wall at Wrigley and suffered two fractured ribs

Wednesday, April 24th Cubs defeat Astros 4-3

• Dansby Swanson continued his hot streak with a 3 run home run in the 1st inning
• The Cubs scored at least four runs in the 1st inning in back to back games for the first time since 2018.
• Jeremy Pena forgot that Ian Happ is a gold glove left fielder.

https://www.mlb.com/cubs/video/jameson-taillon-in-play-no-out-to-jeremy-pena-9govlx?partnerId=web_video-playback-page_video-share

Thursday, April 25th. Cubs defeat Astros 3-1

• The Cubs bats outlast Justin Verlander’s return to form.
• Pete Crow-Armstrong finally gets his first MLB hit and, wow did he do it in style

https://www.mlb.com/video/pete-crow-armstrong-homers-1-on-a-fly-ball-to-right-center-field-miguel-a-y4pz2q?partnerId=web_video-playback-page_video-share

Friday, April 26th. Cubs defeat Red Sox 7-1

• Michael Busch had three hits to snap an 0 for 15 stretch
• Shota Imanaga left the game with a 0.98 ERA, the lowest ERA by a Cubs rookie pitcher in the live ball era.

Saturday, April 27th. Red Sox defeat Cubs 17-0

• You can feel free to forget that this game ever happened.

Sunday, April 28th. Red Sox defeat Cubs 5-4

• Jordan Wicks landing on the IL with forearm tightness seems like a big deal.
• Mike Tauchman is really starting to demand everyday playing time
• Daniel Palencia looked pretty good.

Best Moment of the Week
Pete Crow-Armstrong finally got his first hit and… wow.

Last September was pretty brutal for almost all things Cubs-related. For the fans, it was a slow, precipitous slog to non-contention. For the players, it was the combination of a too-heavy workload and slumping at the wrong time culminating in a late-season swoon that ultimately cost manager David Ross his job. 

The face of all of that was probably the Cubs top prospect- Pete Crow-Armstrong. PCA went hitless in 14 at-bats after being called up for the first time last September. Ross was reluctant to let him and fellow rookie Alexander Canario help much during the stretch run, preferring instead to keep penciling in the names that had been on his roster most of the season instead of taking advantage of the influx of youth to the team. 

In Ross’s defense, PCA has a history of struggling at a new level at the outset. He struggled at both high-A and AA for the first couple of weeks when he first got there. So when he showed up in Chicago on September 11th of last year, with only three weeks left in the season, even the numbers suggested that he probably would not be able to contribute much to the team, and those numbers bore out. Crow-Armstrong went hitless in his 19 plate appearances last season. A lot of folks blamed Ross for not playing him more, which is somewhat fair, given his sparse playing time and the fact that Ross went on record to suggest that he did not want to play him. https://chicago.suntimes.com/cubs/2023/9/19/23881545/whats-best-balance-between-rest-leaning-guys-who-got-you-here-chicago-cubs-david-ross

Last season was last season, though, and this season has brought about a new manager and a fresh sense for Cubs fans of exactly what PCA could mean to this team. Craig Counsell seemed pretty direct in both praising PCA during Spring Training, while also noting that the Cubs top prospect is still unbelievably young. It seemed when camp broke that the plans for PCA were to keep learning at the AAA level this year as a top priority, and just to stay ready if the injury bug hit the major league roster. Well, unfortunately, the injury bug has hit the major league roster. Seiya Suzuki has been out for a week with an oblique injury, and then Cody Bellinger ran into the Wrigley outfield bricks sans ivy on Tuesday night. PCA was called up out of necessity at that point, primarily for defense, but given his 0fer to end 2023, his bat is what everyone was watching. Would he go another stretch without a hit? If he did, would that ruin him mentally? These were some legitimate questions that a lot of Cubs fans had in September. The fact that the first hit never came meant that those lingering questions *really* lingered. 

While it’s impossible to get into the mindset of how PCA internalized that September stretch, I think it’s safe to say that anyone in that position  would want to prove the doubters wrong. Time will tell if he will ultimately silence those doubters, but for one night at least they were definitely muted when he rocketed his first MLB hit into the right field bleachers. Hopefully it will be the first of many big hits for PCA in a Cubs uniform.

Worst Moment of the Week
Saturday

We really don’t need to talk about it. Seriously, it’s not going to do anyone any good.

Weekly Notes

• In the aftermath of Cody Bellinger’s injury there has been some, not a lot, of talk about how dangerous it is to have a brick wall in the outfield at Wrigley that players have to avoid running into. I’ll be honest, it seems like a valid concern. The one thing that stops me short of wanting the Cubs to finally make a change there and maybe add some padding of some kind, is that these injuries are so rare that they are basically non-existent. There have been players that have hit the wall pretty hard, including Darryl Strawberry, but nobody has actually broken a bone doing so until now. So, while a lot of us may be thinking about the possibility of doing away with the bricks (and ivy), I don’t think we’re there quite yet.

• As the injuries pile up, the depth of this roster is starting to really show. At one point, the team looked like it was without its entire starting outfield. Suzuki is out, Ian Happ had to take a few games off with a hamstring strain, and then Bellinger literally hit a wall. Through it all, the Cubs were able to call up replacements and keep the train rolling (Saturday’s game notwithstanding).

• Jordan Wicks has been placed on the IL with a forearm strain. It's yet to be determined the severity of the injury, but given how important Wicks has been to the depleted rotation, one would have to hop for the best.

3 Stars of the Week
3rd Star -  Hector Neris
2nd Star - Dansby Swanson
1st Star - Shota Imanaga

Looking Forward
Monday, 4/29 - Cubs  @ Mets (6:10 pm CDT) - RHP Luis Severino vs. RHP Jameson Taillon

Tuesday, 4/30 - Cubs @ Mets (6:10 pm CDT) - LHP San Manaea vs. RHP Javier Assad

Wednesday, 5/1 - Cubs @ Mets (6:10 pm CDT) - RHP Jose Butto vs. LHP Shota Imanaga

Thursday, 5/2 - Cubs @ Mets (12:10 pm CDT) - RHP Adrian Houser vs. RHP Ben Brown

Friday, 5/3 - Brewers @ Cubs (1:20 pm CDT) - TBD vs. TBD

Saturday, 5/4 - Brewers @ Cubs (1:20 pm CDT) - TBD vs. TBD

Sunday, 5/5 - Brewers @ Cubs (1:20 pm CDT) - TBD vs. TBD

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[CubinNY]

I'm hoping they tread water for a while until at least the OF gets healthy again. They have the entire OF hurt or on the DL. The third baseman with hand, foot, and elbow injuries, and 4/5 of the rotation are injured or ineffective and still are over .500. That's pretty good.

[We Got The Whole 9]

Swanson's line for the week: 261/292/391

Wauchman's line: 409/552/864

 

Wauchman is the only batter to get 20+ PA last week and produce an average or better line. The output from the bats we should be able to count on was horrific. 

 

Morel - 92

Swanson - 92

Happ - 60

Nico - 55

Busch - 17

 

It's amazing that we won the games that we did.