Can This Cubs Pitching Staff Survive a Return of the Lively Ball?

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images

The Cubs are in some trouble. You already knew that. They escaped the ignominy of dropping below .500 when they salvaged one game on their trip to Colorado, but they're 35-34, with a +4 run differential. Just five weeks ago, they peaked at 27-12. Even if they get back to business now, that 7-22 stretch will haunt them. It's essentially torpedoed their chances of winning the NL Central. It might even be what keeps them out of the playoffs. Since the creation of the postseason in 1969, only four teams—the 1982 Atlanta club, the 2003 Twins, the 2005 Astros and the 2023 Diamondbacks—have made the playoffs in a season in which they lost at least 22 of 29. The playoffs are bigger now than they've ever been before, but still, the Cubs face some real precarity now.

Much of the trouble during that awful month of play has come from an unproductive lineup, but the pitching staff has done too little to help matters. Coming into this season, the Cubs thought they were finally pushing back toward the top of the league in terms of overpowering opponents on the mound. Instead, for a variety of reasons, the power is being inflicted on them.

Through 69 games, Cubs hurlers have surrendered 102 home runs, four more than any other team in baseball. They're getting shelled. Losing Cade Horton hurt, of course, but it wasn't supposed to be this way, even after he went down. Edward Cabrera has been homer-prone. So has Colin Rea. Everyone knew homers would be a problem for Jameson Taillon and Shota Imanaga, but somehow, each has been even worse than expected, at times.

One culprit—not the primary one, but a worrisome one, since it's beyond the team's control—is a livelier baseball. Last season, the average drag on the ball was as high as it had been in a decade, league-wide. That kept homers under control and subtly favored teams like the Cubs, whose pitching staffs don't blow hitters away and whose offenses run more on OBP than slugging average. Early this year, it looked like we were getting more of the same. Not anymore.

These are the daily average drag values for each season since 2021. I've added the red line right around the center of the graph, at the .340 drag coefficient level. Any day on which the average drag is below that is likely to be one on which you find yourself remarking to a seatmate, "Man, the ball is really carrying today." Plenty of factors other than drag, or which influence drag unpredictably—wind, temperature, humidity, elevation, the bounciness of the ball, etc.—can also influence ball flight, but to hit something a long way, you want air to slow it down as little as possible. When the drag coefficient drops below .340, in baseball, you notice the air letting the ball sail through a little smoother.

We didn't have even one day last season in which the coefficient dropped that low. In 2024, there were about 40 such days. In 2022, there were fewer than 10. That season, the league hit 1.07 homers per team game. In 2021 and 2023 (which, as you can see, featured much livelier balls, on average), the average was over 1.20 homers per team game. The league has only slugged .410 or higher twice in these five-plus seasons; those years were 2021 and 2023.

Not until the last day of April did we see average drag fall to .340 this year. Since May 17, though, we've seen it happen 11 more times. The ball is lively right now; it's aerodynamic. The league's isolated power (ISO) was .150 in April and .151 in May, but so far in June, it's .173. The ball is carrying, and not just because the weather is warming.

This is brutal news for Cubs pitchers. A staff already struggling to keep the ball in the yard is bound to have even more trouble doing so when it's flying farther for everyone. There's no conspiracy theory here; the league almost certainly didn't try to make this change. But the Cubs are now being victimized by the long ball left and right, partially because it's harder to keep a fly ball on the right side of the fence.

Matthew Boyd should help the team a bit on this front, as he returns to the starting rotation this weekend in San Francisco. (EDIT: Gulp. Never mind. Boyd had a setback in his rehab and his return is on hold due to a shoulder issue.) For that matter, it's a good time to be going to San Francisco, anyway. That park is tough on power hitters even at the best of times. But the Cubs will need to seek a sturdier solution than hope and a few games at pitchers' havens. They need to miss more bats, and they need to find more ways to avoid barrels. These days, it's getting dangerous to let hitters hit it, even with one of the best defenses in baseball behind you.

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[JBears79]

Absolutely not.

[mul21]

56 minutes ago, Matthew Trueblood said:

Matthew Boyd should help the team a bit on this front, as he returns to the starting rotation this weekend in San Francisco. 

 

Ope!

[Matthew Trueblood]

1 hour ago, mul21 said:

Ope!

Geez. What I get for writing too early.