The Cubs' Month of Offensive Misery is Maddening, but Not Shocking

[RandallPnkFloyd]

The Cubs are, to put it mildly, not where we thought they would be by now, based on where they were when this month began. What happened? And how (if at all) can they fix it?

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

On May 1, the Chicago Cubs were 19-12, just 0.5 games behind Milwaukee for the top spot in the National League Central. The St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates scuffled out of the gate, sitting 14-17 & 14-18, respectively, and occupying the bottom two spots in the division.

We’re close to a full month out from that, and things look somewhat the same, but also very different. The Cubs still sit in second place, but their 27-27 record looks much less impressive. They’ve fallen to 4.5 games back of the Brewers and are only a game ahead of St. Louis following their weekend mini-sweep. Pittsburgh remains in play, just 2.5 games back of the Cubs for that second spot.

Suffice to say, things have not gone well this month. It isn’t a secret. The Cubs have struggled to compensate for injuries up and down the roster, in addition to massive slumps from a handful of key players. The plate discipline they demonstrated early in the year has waned, with consistently impressive pitching performances unable to compensate for such offensive shortcomings. All this, while the bullpen was forced to find its footing with no margin for error.

The story of the season to date is one of two very different offensive ballclubs. The April Cubs were ninth in the league in runs (149). They walked at the league's eighth-highest clip (9.6%) and reached base at the 11th-best rate (.318). There wasn’t a ton to be offered in the way of power (.150 team ISO), but they were creating problems for opposing pitchers through the grind--and winning games as a result.

The May Cubs have been… well, not that. This month’s iteration ranks 27th in runs (76), with four games yet to play in the month. They're ahead of only the White Sox, Atlanta, and Cincinnati. They’re striking out at the league’s sixth-worst rate (23.9%), and while they’re still walking (Monday excepted), they aren’t maintaining any kind of on-base presence: their .300 OBP ranks 18th. The modest ISO has fallen further, at .128 for the month (25th). Their 75.1 Contact% also sits 25th, including the league’s worst contact rate within the zone for the month (82.4%). So while some of the approach elements do remain, the team has been entirely unable to parlay patience into anything of value at the plate.

It’s hard to be surprised about where the Cubs are. It’s not as if they came out and set the world on fire on offense; it was a collective effort leading to early success. The rare impact they did get came from the likes of Michael Busch, Christopher Morel, and Seiya Suzuki. Apart from a brief homer-centric stretch from Morel, the pop has disappeared for each. Busch’s ISO is almost .100 lower this month. Suzuki’s is almost .150, albeit with fewer games played due to injury. Only Morel’s has increased, and that's as much because he's stopped finding singles as anything positive.

In a general sense, it’s not a terrible formula. You have a collective approach centered around grinding out difficult at-bats and forcing your way on base. Then, the impact bats come through and do what they need to do. It’s a formula that many elite teams maintain. But then, the Cubs aren’t an elite team, and banking on upside above track record was never a surefire plan.

For that reason, the Cubs’ offensive woes this month shouldn’t come as any sort of surprise. This was a team that did do some things well at the plate last year. They were eighth in walk rate, sixth in OBP, and actually ended up top-10 in runs scored. However, they were middling when it came to quality of contact and over-the-fence power. Their needs were fairly obvious. Instead of making proven, star-caliber upgrades, they banked on upside from the likes of Busch, Morel, and Suzuki.

Last year’s Cubs team also hit well situationally. They were top-10 in average and OBP with runners in scoring position. This year, the Cubs are 20th in average with runners on and 22nd when they’re in scoring position. The steps back from players they hoped would jump forward have been glaring. 

While the Cubs may not be as bad offensively as they’ve been this month, they were never going to be a good offensive club. They simply weren’t built that way. They were constructed in much the same way they were last year: needing efficient pitching and high-level defense.

I’m fine with building a team that way, in theory. If you do so, though, those elements must excel to compensate for the offensive shortcomings, both in the short and in the long term. They’ve largely been able to do that on the bump, but haven’t had the defensive efficiency to support such an infrastructure. When the offense can drum up a few runs, the other elements can’t hold it--and vice-versa.

This is the team they built. It has to be excellent on the fringes just to have a chance. They paid Craig Counsell a lot of money to facilitate that process. Injuries haven’t helped him in Year 1, but neither has the roster construction. There are positions where the team is getting no production whatsoever. There is not a consistently lethal power threat.

That this was foreseeable doesn’t make it any less frustrating from an outside perspective. There are probably solutions inside the organization--and outside, too. Either path, however, is going to require Jed Hoyer to step outside of his ultra-conservative comfort zone. Living there got the Cubs into this very predicament; he’ll have to vacate in order to get them out of it. Which doesn’t lend itself to a ton of optimism at this point.

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[mul21]

Ah yes, every single player having a career worst year was certainly foreseeable. 🙄

[We Got The Whole 9]

I'd like to know what happened to these guys that prevents them from being able to hit a slider. They are the worst team vs sliders when last year they were 5th, for instance.

 

2023/2024

 

FB - 21st w/ 2.0 runs above average / 21st with -8.6

Cut - 3rd with 14.0 / 4th with 9.0

Split - 7th with .01 / 19th with -1.2

Sink - 10th with -4.5 / 23rd with -7.9

Change - 8th with 17.5 / 16th with 1.3

Sliders - 5th with 11.9 / 30th with -16.0

Curve - 22nd with -8.4 / 12th with 2.3