The Cubs Lineup Has Been Decimated By Injuries, But That's Not All

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Chicago Cubs have faced mounting injury trouble all spring, and it's taken a heavy toll on their offense during a season already unfriendly to offense league-wide. Will a return to full strength this week be enough to turn things around?

Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

On any list of the Cubs' best hitters, Cody Bellinger, Seiya Suzuki, Dansby Swanson, and Nico Hoerner have to be in the top six. Depending on your evaluations of the inconsistent Ian Happ and Christopher Morel, maybe all four of those guys are in the top five at any given time. At any rate, they're essential, and being without each of them for stretches of the young season has made the Cubs offense a sputtering mess recently.

The last time the Cubs had all four in their lineup was on Apr. 14, in their 15th contest of the season. Thereafter, Suzuki went on the shelf for what turned out to be just over four weeks. Ten days after that loss, Bellinger, too, was sidelined for a fortnight. He returned just in time to play one game (May 7) with both Hoerner and Swanson, before the latter hit the injured list. Suzuki returned May 11, and he, Hoerner and Bellinger managed to play together three times before Hoerner was removed from the lineup due to his balky hamstring. In the last five weeks, the team has had three of the four together only one-third of the time: 11 games, out of 33.

Reportedly, that could change Tuesday. Both Suzuki and Bellinger are healthy, and both Swanson and Hoerner have a chance to return from their injuries this week. That would be a welcome development, because this team has not functioned well at all in the absence of more than one of these four. With three or four of them in the lineup, they're 15-10 this year. With two or fewer of them, they're 11-12, after Sunday's 3-2 loss to the Pirates.

In general, the team's scoring has trended downward since the first week of the season, and injuries are the main culprit. They especially cratered during Bellinger's absence, but whatever recovery they effected once he came back fizzled quickly as Swanson and Hoerner were hampered by their respective leg trouble.

Even at full strength, this is far from an elite offense. A hot Morel and Michael Busch, plus a healthy Bellinger, Swanson, Hoerner, Happ, and Suzuki does make for that good a lineup, but that's a lot for which to ask. It's much better to hope merely for good health, with the understanding that Morel and Busch will continue to have hot and cold stretches, based on their offensive profiles.

We shouldn't overlook the confluence of these injuries and a brutal stretch of tough pitching as a contributor to the team's offensive struggles. Over the last two weeks, the average fastball the Cubs have seen has been 95.5 miles per hour, which is not only the highest in MLB, but 0.8 MPH higher than the team who has seen the second-hottest heat. It's not just difficult to hit fastballs that hard; it's also harder to handle breaking and offspeed pitches when trying to cover them. The team's collective weighted on-base average (wOBA) on non-fastballs is .245 since May 6, 22nd in MLB. Through May 5, that same number was .274, good for 12th in the league.

Over that two-week span, alone, the Cubs have seen Paul Skenes (twice), Jared Jones (twice), Chris Sale, Yu Darvish, Dylan Cease, Reynaldo López, and Mitch Keller. They were a depleted team facing a gauntlet of great starters. That's why they've only scored 3.4 runs per game over that span, including three times being shut out. 

The bad news is that that stretch of fierce competition isn't quite over. Atlanta comes to town for three more games this week, even as the Cubs lineup becomes whole again. The good news (apart from those impending and much-needed returns to play) is that after that, things open up quite a bit. The Cubs have series against the Brewers in Milwaukee at the end of this month and next, but those are the only two times they'll face a truly formidable pitching staff between the Atlanta series and one against the Phillies in the first week of July. In there are two series apiece against the Reds, Giants, and Cardinals, and encounters with the Mets, White Sox, and Rays. All of those teams lack the kind of elite arms the Cubs have seen recently, and all but the Rays also lack quality depth. 

By no means will the wins come easily from here. Still, some relief is right around the corner, and help is on the way. The Cubs' season will come down, in no small part, to staying healthier than they have over the first two months of the campaign. Great teams don't need to rely on that kind of luck the way this one does, but bad teams don't even have a chance if they do stay healthy, as this one clearly does. Starting Tuesday, we'll start to get a clearer sense of what this team is capable of than we've had for the last six weeks.

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[Billy62]

Well Matt, as usual you are pretty spot on. Of course the front office will want to use the injuries as a reason for the teams poor performance as of late. Folks, it is poor performance, we just dropped three of four to the Pirates at home. But this spring we were reassured by this same front office that we had all this depth. Now, we are seeing that we may have bodies to fill voids in the line-up, it is not true depth, because we cannot go forward with them. Our starting pitching has truly been our saving grace. It has been one of the best rotations, if not the best rotation in the major leagues. It has kept us in ballgames that we otherwise would not be in, and enable us to win a few ballgames in the 11th hour. However, offensively, defensively and surely in the bullpen we are suffering greatly. Of course we were told back in February not to worry. But as the calendar is now closing in on June, I think we are seeing signs that maybe we should worry. The bullpen has some bright spots, Brown, Wesneski, Leiter Jr. have all performed well. The jury is still out on Almonte and even more on Nerris. While Cuas and some others are showing the need for us to move in another direction. I believe we have Carl Edwards Jr. signed to a minor league deal. This spring he wasn't getting knocked all over the park. Bringing him up for a look is a no-brainer for me. If he comes up and gets knocked around and doesn't clear waivers on the way back down, what have you really lost? Madrigal and Mastrobuoni are showing their liabilities in the field. An out has to be an out as David Ross once said. Major league teams can't be given extra outs during an inning. It will almost always come back to haunt you. I think the reality with Matt Mervis is starting to sink in. He just has trouble with Major-League pitching. We have seen it, but sadly so has everybody else, and now his trade value has been compromised because of it. This team is still pretty good. But hard decisions are going to have to be made if this team wishes to contend into October. The starting nine, Hoerner, Happ (?), Bellinger, Morel, Busch, Swanson (?), Suzuki, Gomes/Amaya appear to be mostly adequate. Another big bopper with a little more consistency would be nice to have, and maybe a few more at-bats for Wisdom. Pete Crow-Armstrong has been a pleasant watch so far, and there are still bats that are deserving of a look in the minors. This team is not dead in the water, far from it, but it probably needs a few turns of the screwdriver. What is the status of Bote?

[Guest234]

The status of Bote is that for Jed he has the Theo stench.

Jed wants to win with his own group - maybe, maybe not.

[Rex Buckingham]

I am looking forward to that stretch against weaker pitching as the weather warms up