The Problem with the Cubs' Offense Might Not Be What We Thought It Was

The Cubs are below-average just about across the board, when it comes to run creation. They don't hit for enough power. They don't collect hits on balls in play, which is because their swings are largely geared toward power they don't have. They don't make enough contact to compensate for those shortcomings. It's an underwhelming group.

For my part, I have tended to focus criticism and doubt on the best hitters in that lineup, because they don't seem stout enough. This team was meant to be built around defense, but inherent in such an approach is a certain degree of lineup top-heaviness. You can't build around up-the-middle defense without accepting some below-average offensive work from those four positions (shortstop, second base, center field, and catcher), and that applies pressure to the players at the other positions to be more than above-average.

The Dodgers are built this way. Admittedly, it's more about resource allocation than about an emphasis on fielding, but the result is the same. When healthy, they feature Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, and Teoscar Hernández at the top of the lineup. They've gotten good work from Jason Heyward near the bottom of that batting order this season, but for the most part, they're knowingly accepting subpar contributions from the last few slots in the order, because they spent huge money to give themselves the best top half of the lineup in MLB.

The Yankees have taken a similar tack in recent years, and never more so than in 2024, as they're built around Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, and a whole lot of waiting for those two to come up to bat again. For the last few years, it's also been the Astros' modus operandi, with guys like Jake Meyers, Chas McCormick and Martín Maldonado getting ample playing time even when they weren't hitting. Houston has Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez, José Altuve, and Alex Bregman to anchor their attack, so little else matters.

To see how great hitters can cover for lousy ones, let's create a new mini-metric. It's a very simple one: in what percentage of a player's games do his total bases and walks drawn total four or more? That's not a perfect way to capture the value elite hitters create, but it does get us going in the right direction. Four total bases can come on a lone, solo homer, and that's not always especially valuable, but it is a run. It can be more than that.

Why do teams value power so highly? It's because when a power hitter does his thing, he singlehandedly makes up for a teammate taking an 0-for-3. Four singles can be even more valuable than a homer, but that's very hard to do in a game. This way of boiling down offensive contributions within a game reflects the real value of hitting for average, avoiding making outs, and generating power, and balances them reasonably well, while keeping things simple.

I'm calling this little number Big Game%. The average (among players with at least 100 plate appearances) Big Game% is 14.5 this year. Here's the (fairly satisfying) list of the 10 leading hitters in Big Game% for 2024.

You won't find any Cubs there, and surely, you didn't expect to. The team leader in Big Game% is Seiya Suzuki, at 22.0%. He's 45th on the list, out of 365 qualifying hitters, and is one of four Cubs with above-average marks in both overall weighted on-base average (wOBA) and Big Game%. Joining him in that company are Ian Happ, Cody Bellinger, and Michael Busch.

It's surprising, perhaps, to find not only those four, but below-average hitters Dansby Swanson, Christopher Morel, and Nico Hoerner at or above average in Big Game%. While they're not coming close to keeping pace with the league leaders in player Big Game% (the Dodgers, Yankees, Orioles, Astros, and Phillies) as a team, the Cubs have a good number of players seeing ample playing time and racking up an above-average frequency of Big Games.

Here's the thing: they're not even coming close to making up for the ineptitude of their worst hitters.

Mike Tauchman is a lovely, much-missed ingredient of a good offense, but as you can see, he's the keep-the-line-moving guy. He can catalyze an offense, but never carry it. Suzuki, Happ, and Morel, especially, make up for some bad hitters, but they're not stars of the caliber required to cancel out some of the worst hitters in all of baseball. Pete Crow-Armstrong, Miguel Amaya, and Tomás Nido are black holes on the lineup card. Not even pictured above are Nick Madrigal, Miles Mastrobuoni, and Yan Gomes, to whom the team has allocated 242 wasted plate appearances. Gomes and Mastrobuoni have Big Game rates similar to those of Crow-Armstrong and Amaya, but it would be far too generous to say that Madrigal does, too. He didn't have a single game this season that counts as Big by these criteria, which probably doesn't surprise any Cubs watchers.

It's still plausible to read this as a problem with the best hitters on the team. Suzuki, Happ, and the rest are demonstrably incapable of carrying a team, the way that illustrious list of 10 (or Bryce Harper, 12th in Big Game%, or Pete Alson at 14th, or Christian Yelich at 17th, or Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at 20th) can often do. Just as importantly, though, they're being asked to make up for some of the very worst regular hitters in baseball--especially Crow-Armstrong and Amaya. The team is failing both to assemble a heart of the order on par with the best teams in baseball, and to put credible big-leaguers into the bottom third of the lineup. That's a recipe for persistent failure, and highlights how badly they need a positional overhaul this summer, fall, and winter.