The Cubs' Failure to Find a Leadoff Hitter is Killing the Lineup

There really isn't any one person or player that can be wholly blamed for the Cubs' recent offensive ineptitude. This is a failure on a systematic level, with everyone from Pete Crow-Armstrong to Willi Castro struggling to a troubling degree.

So, before we dive into this analysis, let's at least clear the names of the players who are trying to drag the team out of the mud. Since July 18 (the first game after the All-Star break), Matt Shaw has an OPS over 1.000. I remain dubious of his long-term prospects, but he's proving me wrong every time he steps up to the plate during this stretch. He's innocent, as is Nico Hoerner, who continues to largely do his thing, batting .326 with a .737 OPS and six steals during the second half. His slugging percentage is lower than his on-base percentage, but that's a topic for another time.

Other than those two (and maybe, if you're being really generous, Ian Happ), the entire offensive operation on the North Side of Chicago has been a bust in the second half. You can pinpoint a lot factors for this—the lack of a quality bench has pushed the regulars too hard, Jed Hoyer failed to bring in any reinforcements (sans Castro) at the trade deadline, Craig Counsell is showing a shocking lack of feel with his lineup changes, and more. Pick any of those notions, and you'll stumble across a painful truth that is plaguing the Cubs right now.

I'll offer my own conjecture to the ongoing discourse: The Cubs simply do not have a legitimate leadoff hitter on the roster, and it's killing their production. Now, this isn't meant to be a takedown of Michael Busch, who has indeed struggled since moving to the top spot in the batting order. It was just a few weeks ago that we were marveling at the season he was having and the steadiness he brought to the leadoff role.

Instead, this is a general observation about the team as a whole. Craig Counsell has deployed four primary leadoff hitters this year (i.e., players who have started more than five games as the No. 1 hitter in the order). These are their stats in those games:

• Ian Happ: 84 games, 394 plate appearances, .224/.322/.374, 50 walks, 90 strikeouts, 12 home runs
• Michael Busch: 20 games, 85 plate appearances, .195/.258/.442, four walks, 25 strikeouts, six home runs
• Nico Hoerner: eight games, 35 plate appearances, .242/.286./.303, two walks, five strikeouts, zero home runs
• Pete Crow-Armstrong: eight games, 36 plate appearances, .353/.361/.765, one walk, 13 strikeouts, three home runs

The immediate observation is that, besides Crow-Armstrong (whose samples is less than 40 trips to the plate), Busch leads the Cubs' leadoff options with a .700 OPS out of the top spot in the order. That simply won't get it done, especially for a team that's trying to set up Kyle Tucker and Seiya Suzuki in the middle of the order.

I also want to introduce two more stats to the equation: tOPS+ and sOPS+. The classic version of OPS+ functions much like wRC+; it is an indicator of overall offensive performance, with 100 serving as the baseline for league average, and thus any number that exceeds that mark means a player is that many "points" above average. In other words, if a player has a 117 OPS+, they have been 17% better than the league-average hitter.

What makes tOPS+ and sOPS+ different is that they are based on splits; in our case, a player's tOPS+ will indicate how they are performing in the leadoff role relative to their own body of work on the season. For example, Ian Happ's tOPS+ when batting first in the order is 97, meaning he's been three percent worse batting leadoff than he has overall this season. sOPS+ functions similarly, though it's based on the league average in that split. So, for example, Happ's sOPS+ when batting first is 88, meaning he's been 12% worse than the league-average performance of all leadoff hitters.

If that didn't land, all you really need to understand is this: 

sOPS+ tells you how good a player is relative to the rest of the league in a specific situation. 
tOPS+ tells you how good a player is relative to their own performance in a specific situation.

So, how do the Cubs' leadoff options fare in these metrics?

• Happ: 97 tOPS+, 88 sOPS+
• Busch: 62 tOPS+, 85 sOPS+
• Hoerner: 65 tOPS+, 60 sOPS+
• Crow-Armstrong: 168 tOPS+, 193 sOPS+

With this information available, we can see that, again, besides Crow-Armstrong, each Cubs leadoff hitter hasn't been any good. All three of Happ, Busch, and Hoerner have been below their own average performance when batting atop the order, and they've all been much worse than the league average.

You don't need me to tell you how problematic that is for a team that has primarily won games this season with offensive onslaughts. Yes, the entire lineup is struggling right now, but it isn't hard to imagine what a more competent option atop the order could do in terms of creating a snowball effect. Anecdotally, you may remember the "You go, we go" slogan of the Dexter Fowler years, where manager Joe Maddon literally pegged his leadoff hitter as the reason for the offense's success or failure on any given night.

Now, this is preliminary analysis. You can apply those sOPS+ and tOPS+ metrics in even more specific situations—like, say, when a player is leading off an inning, which may be even more important to the lineup's nightly performance than just the performance of the guy who bats first in the game. We also haven't covered whether or not changing spots in the order tangibly affects a player's mentality or plate approach. There's a lot of evidence it does, but there's also reason to cling to the usual small sample caveats and look for another explanation.

Regardless, the results we do have aren't promising. The Cubs have been below-average from the leadoff spot all season long. Craig Counsell deserves his fair share of criticism for his odd lineup maneuvering, but he didn't put this roster together. There aren't many other options the skipper could try to fix this hole, and for all the success Crow-Armstrong has had in his limited opportunities, his free-swinging habits aren't entirely conducive to a reliable, consistent leadoff hitter.

Is this the biggest roster failing of the Cubs in 2025? I wouldn't say so. A better bench could have negated this offensive swoon in the first place. But, given that everything is under the microscope during this mini-collapse, it's hard not to groan at the team's inability to replicate its success with Fowler a decade ago.