How the 2024 Cubs Offense Let Pitchers Turn Their Greatest Strength Into a Weakness

[notthebobbyorr]

Running back much of the 2023 offense has not proved a winning strategy for the Cubs, despite the one major addition they made being a rousing success. What's gone wrong? In part: last year's team knew how to punish mistakes better.

Image courtesy of © Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports

In 2023, the Cubs lineup made up for its lack of a high-end power threat–Cody Bellinger and Christopher Morel tied for the team lead with 26 home runs apiece–by putting together long chains of professional at-bats, giving pitchers very few spots in the order where they could let their guard down. They weren’t a dominant unit, and they didn’t have traditional superstars, but they were respectable, ranking eighth in the league with a .751 OPS (and 12th in the park-adjusted wRC+). As one might expect from a lineup light on pop but heavy on patience, that OPS was buoyed by on-base machines, and their .330 on-base percentage ranked just outside the top five in the league. All those deep counts and trips to first added up, and it’s no surprise that the Cubs lineup ranked second in terms of pitches per plate appearance, with 3.99–trailing only the division rival Brewers.

After re-signing Bellinger, retaining Mike Tauchman, and adding a young hitter with a reputation for a keen eye (Michael Busch) to the mix, it was reasonable to expect more of the same from the 2024 offense. As you’re surely aware, that just hasn’t been the case through the first half of the season. Despite earning free trips to first base at the same pace they did last year, the team’s overall on-base percentage has plummeted, because their outcomes on batted balls–denoted here as BABIP, or batting average on balls in play–have taken a dramatic turn for the worse:

	O-Swing%	BB%	BABIP	OBP
2023	26.8	9.2	.303	.330
2024	27.3	9.2	.282	.311

Worse yet, a team that already had trouble generating extra-base hits is having an even worse time of it this year. HR/FB% tells us how many homers a team gets out of the fly balls they hit. The league’s average last season was 12.7%, and this year it stands at 11.1%, but the Cubs have seen a decline of nearly twice that size, falling from 12.9% to an even 10%.

And those flies aren’t turning into doubles or triples, either. The only 3 teams that have fewer extra-base hits per plate appearance than the Cubs are the Marlins, Pirates, and White Sox. That’s not the kind of company you want to keep.

All of this is information that you’ve already noticed, and that’s been reflected in the standings, but the more pertinent question here is: why? This was not a veteran lineup headed for a cliff; this collection of hitters should be producing a far higher quality of contact than this. Yet, entering play on Jul. 10, the team had a .682 OPS, just 21st in the league.

Much of this can be traced back to the team’s aforementioned patience-oriented approach; the whole point of being patient and “working the count” is to force pitchers to throw hittable pitches–chiefly fastballs–in predictable locations for hitters to crush. The 2024 Cubs do the former, then don’t do enough of the latter when they get their chance. The 67.5% “hard”--4-seam fastballs, sinkers, and cutters–pitches they get in advantageous counts is the fifth-most in baseball, but their OPS against those pitches is only 11th-best, at 1.087, and their in-zone whiff rate is the third worst, with the team missing on 18% of their swings.

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[UMFan83]

I’m pretty sure my subscription to NSBB Premium back in 2004 guaranteed me access to all paywalled content in perpetuity, just tell @Tim, he’ll straighten this out for me.