The Cubs' Offense Is Putting The Ball In The Air, But In The Wrong Way & Direction

The Cubs haven’t been blowing anybody out, but they haven’t exactly been getting blown out, either. Every game seems winnable, only for us all to watch the bullpen blow something like a 2-1 lead late or for the offense to continually fail to come up with any kind of big hit on the rare occasion that they get runners on base to begin with. 

Literally, as I typed that paragraph, Seiya Suzuki and Ian Happ led off the bottom of the second inning against the Cardinals with singles, only for the next three hitters to go strikeout, fly out, strikeout. That’s just the way it’s been going lately for the Cubs. However, this is mostly the same group of guys that put together an above-average offense for the Cubs just last season. What gives?

Well, according to FanGraphs, there is one obvious thing: the Cubs are 29th in baseball in line drive rate. The only team below them, the Miami Marlins, are 28th in baseball in total runs scored. I could point to that, declare that is the issue, and move on, but there’s more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to hitting in baseball. After all, the team that is 28th in line drive rate, the Kansas City Royals, is fifth in baseball in runs scored. So clearly, it isn’t much of an issue for them. 

Before I get much further, let me explain something about batted balls. As evidenced by the Royals, not hitting line drives isn’t, by itself, a bad thing. You probably already know this, but just in case, typically, line drives get guys on base from a batted ball standpoint. Fly balls result in home runs the most often but are also converted to outs most often. Ground balls are somewhere in between, but generally, the worst of the three unless you’re prime Billy Hamilton. You hope they find a hole, but typically, it’ll just be a single or, if you’re lucky, a double or triple down the line. Here are the league-wide stats on each type of batted ball so far this season:

Back to the Cubs, who, as a reminder, are 28th in line drive rate. You’d think this would lead to a low batting average, and it has. They are 27th in baseball in batting average. The good news? They’re fifth in fly ball rate! So, while they might not be hitting for a high average, they surely hit a ton of home runs. Right? 

Wrong! As you most likely know since you’re reading a Cubs article on a Cubs website, the Cubs are 20th in MLB in home runs, and with 67 of them, they are a far cry from the Yankees and Orioles at the top of the list, who both have over 100. Even worse, since that extremely arbitrary date of April 27, the Cubs are 24th in baseball in home runs. They are 25th in baseball in wRC+ on fly balls this season. Hitting so many balls in the air has not been a profitable venture for the Cubs. 

Let me explain another thing about batted balls that you likely already know: not all fly balls are created equal! Ideally, you want to hit a fly ball to the pull side for two main reasons. The most obvious is that the fence is shorter over there than it is to center field. Second, because the bat has more time to pick up speed when you pull the ball, balls hit to the pull side are usually hit harder than those hit to the opposite field. Here are the baseball-wide stats on fly ball location so far this season:

So, back to the Cubs this year. They’re hitting a lot of fly balls. But they aren’t hitting a lot of home runs, nor are they particularly productive on those fly balls. If you’ve been following to this point, you’ve probably come to the correct conclusion: a whole lot of those fly balls that the Cubs are hitting aren’t pulled or even to center field. 42.3 percent of them, to be precise, are hit to the opposite field, which is third in baseball and just 0.4 percentage points behind the Washington Nationals, who lead the way.  

If you’re curious who the biggest offenders of this are, I am glad you asked. I’ll limit this table to the active roster, minus David Bote, since he has such a small sample size:

Mike Tauchman and the catching situation stick out like a sore thumb here, and while most people wouldn’t say Tauchman has been the issue with the offense, he does have just a 76 wRC+ since the start of May. It’s also not a coincidence that the consensus three best hitters on the team, Bellinger, Morel, and Suzuki, are towards the bottom of this list. 

One other thing that isn’t captured on that chart but stuck out to me is that from the start of the season to April 26, Michael Busch was hitting just 29.9 percent of his fly balls to the opposite field. Since then? Fifty-six percent of them have been hit to the opposite field, and just 12 percent have been hit to the pull side, which might help explain some of his struggles. 

To recap, the Cubs aren’t hitting for average because they aren’t hitting many line drives. Thus, they have struggled to string hits together and score runs. They’re instead hitting a lot of fly balls, but they aren’t getting the home run output that a team typically would since they are not hitting them to the pull side. It’s been a lot of lazy fly balls to the opposite field. All of this results in a team struggling to score runs and nothing but a miserable watching experience for us fans.