Off the Lake: Can Summer Wrigley Save the Cubs’ Offense?

It was nearly a good week in St. Petersburg. Had Brandon Lowe simply been discouraged from playing baseball as a youth, or had Taylor Walls been a patriot and enlisted in the military out of high school, the Cubs might have won the series and we might be cautiously optimistic right now. Instead, the Cubs are down to three games under .500, frustration with the (statistically very average) bullpen is mounting, and Craig Counsell has turned to smallball strategies usually seen against Little League infields exhibiting weak fundamentals.

Let’s talk about the offense.

In a twist that nobody wants to hear, the Cubs have actually been doing pretty well with runners on base. The team’s “clutch” rating, the difference between their average performance and their performance in high-leverage situations, ranks the best it’s ranked in Major League Baseball since 2015. After years of bottom-third finishes in the infamously quirky metric, the Cubs have been pretty good at producing runs under pressure this season, ranking tenth in baseball. Has that changed since April ended? Of course. The Cubs are 27^th in the majors in the number starting May 1^st. So, if you’re feeling gaslit because the Cubs’ record falls entirely in line with what run differential indicates it should be, that’s what’s going on: High-leverage situations went outrageously well in April, then customarily poorly across May and the first eleven games of June.

May was the real problem. Since June began, the Cubs haven’t hit that poorly late in games, with all five of their wins coming by two runs or fewer. The problem is that all six losses also came in close games. Every Cubs game this month has been a close one. Thanks to confirmation bias and the exhaustion this style of losing provokes, the losses loom disproportionately large.

Is the offense actually bad, then? Well, it’s not good. The Cubs are 18^th in the majors in wRC+, checking in four percent worse than average. The Cubs’ offense sits around the middle of the league. This was the expectation coming into the season, and it should be the expectation going forward. Individually, there are problems, but even those problems aren’t happening with unexpected players. The below-average hitters—Dansby Swanson, Miguel Amaya, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Nick Madrigal, and Yan Gomes—all projected as below-average coming into the season, with the lone exception being Swanson, whose positive expectations were accompanied by slight skepticism given his below-average career track record. To be sure, all five of these guys are underperforming. Each has been worse than their preseason projection. But they weren’t expected to rake.

The problem with the Cubs’ offense is not that it’s underperforming its ability. The problem is that its ability isn’t that good. The Cubs possess an average MLB roster and one of the best farm systems in the game. The hope entering this season was that the mediocre NL Central would provide a manageable playoff path in the last year before the farm system began bearing major fruit. Instead, the Brewers are leaving the Cubs in the dust, the farm system appears a little further away from a windfall than it did in March, and while the Wild Card picture is surprisingly friendly, a recent surge by the Padres leaves the Cubs in a pack of what’s presently seven teams fighting for the last playoff spot.

There’s a temptation, looking at the blue skies today, to ask if a weekend series against the Cardinals in the most picturesque stadium in pro sports could awaken something in the bats. Conventional wisdom encourages this line of optimism. Wrigley Field is known to be a better place to hit in the summer than it is in the spring. Is this line of transformation possible? Sure. But looking at this weekend, only on Sunday are winds forecast to blow out towards the bleachers. Today they’re blowing in. Tomorrow, they’re blowing from right to left, coming in off the lake. What about next week? Well…here’s the history. Before and after June 14^th, here’s how the Cubs’ offense has performed every year since 2014:

To cast this in a hopeful light, two of the three improvements are large. Both last year and in 2017, the offense wasn’t only better after Flag Day but a lot better. That’s only two seasons, though, in a nine-year sample, and one of them has universally been attributed to horrific underperformance during a young core’s World Series hangover. Most of the time, the offense holds rather steady throughout the year. The Wrigley summer difference might be real, but either the inflection point comes earlier in the season or the change isn’t that large.

In short? The Cubs’ offense is what it is, and probably will continue to be what it is until some assortment of Crow-Armstrong, Michael Busch, Matt Shaw, Kevin Alcántara, Owen Caissie, and others rounds into major league form. We’ll get those jolts of life. Guys like Mike Tauchman will continue to materialize, and with any luck, the front office will find them or the coaching staff will develop them at a higher rate than we’ve seen the last few seasons. But this is a time-intensive process. The best offenses stay the best for a long time, and they take a comparably long time to build. In the meantime, the best thing we can hope for is that the hits come at the right time. For whatever it’s worth, with the exception of May, they generally have.

Moves:

• On Tuesday, Ben Brown went on the IL with what’s now been announced as a stress reaction in his neck. Despite how good Brown’s been, it’s more of a bullpen loss, as Jordan Wicks is now back into the rotation, and at a very high level Brown and Wicks were filling the same swingman role. Colten Brewer was activated in the corresponding move.
• Jorge López, whom the Mets designated for assignment after a dramatic ejection, is now an Iowa Cub. López had a terrible 2023 across three teams, and he’s slightly below replacement level this year, but he had a solid 2022 and the Cubs are in the bullpen market.

News/Rumors/Speculation:

• On Monday, we mentioned the DFA’d Cavan Biggio as a good fit for the Cubs in light of Nico Hoerner’s hand injury. Biggio ended up landing with the Dodgers in exchange for a minor league relief pitcher, one who is not a standout prospect. It’s possible the Blue Jays wanted a little bullpen depth in the deal and that the Cubs, dealing with a number of high-profile close losses, didn’t want to deal from their own stash. It’s also possible the Cubs just didn’t want Biggio, or that they didn’t want to make room on their 40-man roster, or that they were optimistic about Hoerner’s health. Whatever the case, Biggio’s a Dodger and Hoerner reentered the lineup on Wednesday, going 1-for-4 each of the last two days.
• Within the last two hours, all of José Abreu, Harold Ramírez, and Daniel Vogelbach were designated for assignment. Of the three, Vogelbach is the most promising, with a very good xwOBA despite his terrible results at the plate so far this year in Toronto. Ramírez has the most positional flexibility. All three project as at least league-average bats, and taking a shot on any of the three would be justified, but none would be anything more than a little lottery ticket, as is normal for DFA’d guys. Unlike the middle infield situation when Hoerner was out, I’m not sure the corner infield and designated hitter situation can be upgraded through the waiver market.

Games:

• Friday: Cubs vs. St. Louis, 1:20 PM CDT (Marquee)
• Saturday: Cubs vs. St. Louis, 1:20 PM CDT (Marquee/FS1)
• Sunday: Cubs vs. St. Louis, 12:05 PM CDT (Roku)

The Roku channel is free online and on a variety of TV software. As for the games themselves: Imanaga vs. Pallante is the friendliest matchup to the Cubs, but that’s not because Pallante is a pushover. Two of his three starts since returning to the rotation have gone very well. The other two are closer to tossups, but all three do lean the Cubs’ direction.

Will the Cubs keep running and bunting like they did against Tampa Bay? I’m not sure. Pedro Pagés’s sample is still really small, but Iván Herrera doesn’t grade out particularly well as a thrower, which would point towards stolen base attempts. Kyle Gibson and Miles Mikolas, though, are both pretty good at controlling the running game, and I’m unaware of a good source of data about fielding against the bunt. My guess would be that the Cubs do stay aggressive—Counsell seemed rather committed to that approach this week, and results were there—but it seems mostly psychological. Counsell’s trying to produce a spark. Over a short period of time, it’s not the worst idea.

Does Michael Kopech Have Any Trade Value?

The stories for the White Sox over the next month and a half will be the players sold off and the returns they generate. One currently floating around the rumor mill? Closer Michael Kopech, who happens to have just had a very bad week in Seattle.

Kopech was once a high-potential starter. Before that, he enjoyed a successful stint in the White Sox’ bullpen in 2021. Now, though, he’s the fourth-worst reliever in the league by fWAR, and while some regression in the home run department will help that, it’s still not the prettiest picture.

Someone will take a flyer on Kopech. His velocity’s been excellent, and someone might like him as even a starting pitching lottery ticket, with free agency not coming until after 2025 and the White Sox’ pitching development apparatus presumably pretty bad. But returns for relievers are rarely seismic, and Kopech is not going to headline the relief pitching market even if he dazzles over the next four weeks. It’s not even like he can rack up save numbers. The White Sox provide very few save opportunities.

Moves:

• Tommy Pham is expected to be activated from the IL today. No corresponding move has been reported.
• Eloy Jiménez is now rehabbing in Arizona, meaning he’ll be back in three weeks at the latest if there aren’t any setbacks.
• With Drew Thorpe’s promotion, Sammy Peralta was optioned right back to Triple-A while Dominic Leone moved from the 15-day IL to the 60-day IL to make room on the 40-man.
• Andrew Benintendi and Steven Wilson are off the IL, with Duke Ellis returned to Triple-A and Tim Hill designated for assignment in the corresponding moves. Hill couldn’t be optioned to the minors, hence the DFA, which opens up a 40-man spot.
• Rule 5 pick Shane Drohan’s rehab window closed, and the White Sox returned him to the Red Sox rather than add him to the active roster.

Games:

• Friday: White Sox @ Arizona, 8:40 PM CDT (NBC Sports Chicago)
• Saturday: White Sox @ Arizona, 9:10 PM CDT (NBCSC/FS1)
• Sunday: White Sox @ Arizona, 3:10 PM CDT (NBCS)

No Garrett Crochet in this series for the Sox, but Erick Fedde and Drew Thorpe pitch tomorrow and Sunday, and both Ryne Nelson and Jordan Montgomery—at this point the Diamondbacks’ listed starters tonight and Sunday, respectively—have been vulnerable so far this year. A series win is plausible.

**

Nothing on the Bulls, Bears, Blackhawks, or Sky in this edition of Off the Lake. We are once again in a running–late loop. We’ll catch up on those franchises on Monday.