It was a rough month for the Cubs, beginning with the tail end of a sweep in St. Louis and ending on an 8-12 skid. They had a losing record on the month, the first time that’s happened in a couple years. Cole Hamels went down with an oblique injury. Kyle Hendricks missed time with shoulder fatigue.
There were positives, of course: Craig Kimbrel appeared on the scene. Adbert Alzolay might be the first entirely homegrown pitcher to stick in the rotation since the Jeff Samardzija days. Yu Darvish and Anthony Rizzo combined for the season’s biggest emotional victory to date.
But on the whole, it was a disappointing month on the North Side. Here’s what went wrong:
Editor’s note: Joe cites a lot of statistics in here that not all baseball fans are familiar with. So before he begins, here they are:
- Weighted Runs Created-Plus (wRC+): A comprehensive measure of offensive production in which 100 is league-average, 135 is 35% better than league-average, 80 is 20% poorer than league-average, and so on.
- Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP): Batting average without strikeouts—this tends to average out for a player over time, making it an effective gauge of whether a player’s having particularly good or bad luck.
- Isolated Power (ISO): The gap between batting average and slugging percentage, a rough measure of a player’s power.
- Win Probability Added (WPA): On each play, a good result will improve a team’s chances to win, while a poor result worsens those chances. This measures the cumulative effect of all plays for a particular player on wins and losses, rather than measuring the quality of their actual performance.
- Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP): This is the same as ERA in terms of how it’s scaled, but it adjusts ERA under the assumption every pitcher should have the same results on balls in play. It isn’t a perfect assumption, but FIP is better than ERA at prediciting future results.
All statistics come from FanGraphs.
Javy Báez cooled off.
After posting wRC+’s of 139 in March/April and 125 in May, Báez was a below-average hitter in June relative to the rest of the league, his wRC+ dropping to 93. He did swat seven home runs, and his performance over the back half of the month was better than the front, but it was a frustrating month at the dish.
Thankfully, some of this was probably bad luck. Báez’s .257 June BABIP was markedly worse than his .339 career BABIP, while his ISO was .262 for the month, exactly in line with his season ISO. In other words, hits have come on fewer balls in play, but power hasn’t declined proportionally to the hits themselves, implying Báez might just be hitting it in unlucky places.
Second base was a black hole offensively.
Addison Russell, David Bote, and Daniel Descalso—the Cubs’ three primary second basemen—combined for exactly 0.0 WAR over the month, recording just four home runs between them with a combined .298 OBP. For all three, the month was a step backwards, which is likely coincidental, but it’s nonetheless troubling, and makes one wonder how the Ian Happ Reclamation Effort is going.
The Carlos González experiment failed, and Albert Almora Jr. was on the wrong side of streaky.
Carlos González not producing offensively wasn’t a surprise, and while it’s debatable that González deserved 49 plate appearances, it’s hard to fault the front office for giving him a shot.
Albert Almora, though, slowed down dramatically after a 37-day stretch across April and May in which he posted a 130 wRC+. In June, that number was down to 39, which was worse than even that of González.
Anthony Rizzo had a bad month.
Heroics in Los Angeles aside, Rizzo’s June was rather meek. Four home runs, a below-average (96) wRC+, and only a .394 slugging percentage. He was the Cubs’ leader among hitters in Win Probability Added, and trailed only Cole Hamels and Brandon Kintzler on the team as a whole, but he wasn’t consistently what the Cubs need him to be.
Rizzo’s season has still, on the whole, gone rather well (his 2019 wRC+ is 135, reflecting a scorching May), and it’s fair to expect him to return to form, possibly after a little rest over the All-Star Break. But in June, his presence in the middle of the lineup was missed, especially with Báez still seemingly working his way back from that heel injury.
Yu Darvish was better, but still not great.
Darvish posted his best ERA of any month of the season (if you combine March and April), but that ERA was still only 4.91. His FIP was actually better in May than it was in June. He continues to struggle with walks and home runs, even more by rate than he did in 2018.
That start against the Dodgers was electric, and it built well-deserved goodwill from a fanbase that had (in my opinion) unfairly vilified a pitcher who’s been accountable and open all year, even if not successful. Hopefully what happened in Chavez Ravine becomes more the norm than an exception.
Mike Montgomery struggled.
Montgomery isn’t always in high-leverage situations, and he was thrust into a tough spot Friday night, but as a swingman and long reliever, spots like Friday night are what he needs to be prepared to handle.
That isn’t meant to be a shot at Montgomery’s preparation—I have no idea whether he was prepared or not, and I have no reason to doubt that he was. Sometimes, pitchers just don’t have it. But whatever the cause, it combined with a middling rest of the month to make him the least valuable Cub by WAR over June. Over eight outings, his ERA was 7.45, and his FIP was even worse at 7.96. He walked just as many batters as he struck out. It was a bad month.
And while eight outings is a small sample size, it hasn’t been a good year in total for Montgomery. Which is part of what makes Alzolay so necessary.
***
There were, of course, plenty of positives. Cole Hamels, while healthy, pitched like an ace. Brad Brach, for all his ERA struggles, put up a FIP of 1.60, which is really encouraging. Brandon Kintzler, as alluded to in the Rizzo blurb, came through again and again. Kris Bryant and Jason Heyward had great months. Kyle Schwarber made progress at the plate. Willson Contreras’ strong year continued.
And had Friday night gone differently—either with Hamels not getting hurt or Montgomery answering the call or the offense exploding—the Cubs might have taken the series in Cincinnati and finished a middling month on a positive note. They have a favorable draw these next six games, and the Brewers are struggling beyond their top line, so the Cubs stand a good chance of entering the All-Star Break alone in first place in the division. Báez and Rizzo should turn things around. It’s unlikely Yu Darvish will perform worse than he has so far. Kimbrel will help ease the load on the bullpen, and Hendricks returning will help a scattered rotation.
But, on the whole, June was a rough month. And it highlighted a few things—second base, bench bats, bullpen depth—that need to be addressed over the next month if the Cubs want the best chance possible of playing in October, and playing well when they get there.
