Every day for the past two weeks, the Chicago Cubs endured a similarly painful offensive performance.
Plenty of baserunners yet the runs failed to consistently follow. The Cubs entered Wednesday’s series finale against the St. Louis Cardinals owning six one-run losses and three by two runs within that span. All winnable games backed by one of the best rotations in the majors.
President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer attributed the Cubs’ offensive shortcomings, most notably with runners in scoring position, to the inherent randomness that occurs within a season, “but it doesn’t mean when you’re going through it you’re not searching for answers.”
“When you look at our underlying numbers, there’s a lot of things to draw a ton of confidence from,” Hoyer said Wednesday. “But it’s a results business. We haven’t won the games. We’ve been losing a lot of games. … We just haven’t been able to get the big hit.
“That’s the biggest frustration of all of it is, whenever you’re playing all those close games, it means someone gave up a run at some point. Our pitching has been fantastic. Our run prevention has been fantastic. We just haven’t gotten any big hits.”
The Cubs finally broke out in a big way Wednesday night at Wrigley Field.
They turned a two-run deficit entering the bottom of the third into a seven-run lead by the seventh thanks to the timely hits that had eluded the offense the last two weeks. They put 20 runners on base in a 10-4 victory over the Cardinals, scoring double-digit runs for the seventh time this season.
The Cubs’ futility with runners in scoring position fueled their anemic stretch of nine losses in 12 games since April 28. They went into Wednesday’s game hitting .180 (20-for-111) with RISP in that stretch, leaving 98 runners on base.
Everything clicked in their leverage at-bats against left-hander Jordan Montgomery and the Cardinals bullpen to avoid a sweep. The Cubs (18-19) finished 6-for-14 with RISP and erased the Cardinals’ early lead on two-out RBIs from Seiya Suzuki (double) and Patrick Wisdom (two-run homer).
“Just not panicking, in a sense, but we understood what we needed to get back to,” Wisdom said. “And that’s just being true to who we are as hitters up and down and knowing what we’re capable of.”
Six Cubs recorded at least one extra-base hit, including Dansby Swanson’s two doubles and Yan Gomes’ two-run homer in his first game off the concussion injured list. Left-hander Justin Steele again produced a quality start, allowing three runs in six innings.
“We’ll take this style of win every day,” Gomes said. “But what’s consistent is our ability to put guys on, keep putting on the pressure. If we stick with it, hits are going to come. Today hits came. … This game is contagious. Momentum is a big thing, so hoping it goes our way now.”
An offensive regression was inevitable after delivering the second-best production through the first three weeks of the season. The recent slump provided a good test for a collectively unproven Cubs team.
The veteran offseason additions possess plenty of experience weathering these types of stretches. Learning how to get through it together while maintaining their respective approaches and not trying to do too much in big moments can all pay off in September, when a postseason appearance might be on the line.
Manager David Ross credits confidence not wavering within the clubhouse.
“If you really start to dive deep, which we do when you’re in these moments, of, like, what’s the difference, what is holding us back, and you start to look, there’s a couple of things that we identified that were outliers,” said Ross, referring to ground balls leading to double plays. “But the offense has been about the same offense as we were before.”
The Cubs failed to take advantage of a reeling Cardinals team this week, though they at least avoided the worst-case scenario and regrouped ahead of Thursday’s day off.
A challenging three-city, nine-game trip awaits against the Minnesota Twins, Houston Astros and Philadelphia Phillies. It kicks off a potential monthlong gauntlet within the 162-game schedule. The next nine-game homestand features the New York Mets and Tampa Bay Rays before the Cubs embark on another three-city trip, this time to California, where they will face the San Diego Padres, Los Angeles Angels and San Francisco Giants.
Major League Baseball’s balanced schedule creates fewer opportunities to make up ground — or build on a lead — in the division over the course of the season. The Cubs won’t face the Cardinals again until their two-game series in London the last week of June. After opening the season against the Milwaukee Brewers, their next series doesn’t arrive until July 3, the week leading into the All-Star break. The Cubs won’t even face the Pittsburgh Pirates for the first time until June 13.
As important as it is not to overreact to a single series, the Cubs could not, and did not, let Wednesday’s opportunity to get back in the win column slip away.
“I do take a lot of comfort in the underlying stuff,” Hoyer said, “but ultimately we’ve got to start scoring runs at the right times and start winning games.”
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