Cubs in a 'frustrating place to be' as they enter July

MILWAUKEE — Before the Chicago Cubs opened up their final series of June against the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday, Jed Hoyer sat in the third-base dugout at American Family Field. The team’s president of baseball operations answered question after question about the team’s position ahead of the upcoming MLB trade deadline.

Coming out of that chat, the objective seemed simple: This group needs to perform in July to make sure Hoyer doesn’t sell at the deadline. To Cubs manager Craig Counsell, the first half of that sentence is really the most important thing.

“I think we have to perform in July,” he said Sunday. “Take away the second part. I mean, I think we have to perform in July.”

But entering deadline month, this ballclub is showing no signs that it’ll be an easy task.

The Cubs dropped Sunday’s rubber match to the Brewers, 7-1, finishing June with an 11-16 record. They’ve now lost 12 of their last 14 series dating back to mid-May. They’re 39-46, 11 1/2 games back in the National League Central and five back in the NL wild card race.

“Frustrating place to be for the group,” Ian Happ said. “We’re obviously not close to where we want to be.”

It’s obviously been a bad stretch of baseball for a team who had real playoff hopes entering this season. Sunday afternoon, specifically, some of the same issues that have led to that bad baseball over the last two months cropped up once again.

The offensive struggles were still there. Nico Hoerner led off against Milwaukee’s Freddy Peralta with a home run on the second pitch of the game, and after a fly out by Michael Busch, Cody Bellinger dropped a single into center field.

After that promising start, the Cubs recorded no more hits the rest of the game, going 0-for-26 and only mustering up a trio of walks. In fact, between Busch’s walk in the third and Miguel Amaya‘s walk in the eighth, 15 straight Cubs hitters were sent back to the dugout.

“It’s one run,” Counsell said. “It’s hard to see a scenario where that’s going to win us a game. And so, offensively, no matter who we’re facing, we’re going to have to be better.”

There was also the kind of defensive miscue that’s seemed to cost the Cubs a number of times over the last few weeks.

Kyle Hendricks had already given up a go-ahead two-run homer to the Brewers’ Christian Yelich in the bottom of the fourth, and after a strikeout and a walk, Rhys Hoskins launched a long fly ball to left field. Hendricks thought it was a two-run shot off the bat.

Happ tried to positioned himself under it, thinking it was going to land more toward the wall. But with the roof open, the wind and sun probably had a bit of an effect on the play, and it instead fell to the warning track behind him (Happ himself didn’t point to the elements as causes for the defensive miscue).

“Obviously, not my best moment out there,” Happ said, “and it puts Kyle in a tough spot where he’s got first and second and not another out on the board. Make him get four outs in an inning. Stuff like that you don’t want to happen.”

The drop came back to bite the Cubs later in the inning.

Milwaukee scored their third run on Sal Frelick’s RBI single the next batter, and they loaded the bases on Jackson Chourio’s base knock. But Hendricks then struck out Andruw Monasterio swinging for what should’ve been the third out, which would’ve gotten the Cubs out of it down just two runs.

Instead, Brice Turang launched a two-out grand slam to right field, effectively ending the struggling Cubs’ day early.

“It was another bad pitch that I shouldn’t have gotten away with, so I would’ve been so lucky if I got an out there,” Hendricks said of the dropped ball in left. “Lucky that stayed in the ballpark, to be honest. So no, that’s on me. I gotta keep going. One pitch away, gotta execute a pitch and get out of there, 3-1 at the worst.”

Coming on the heels of an emotional win in the second game of the series, the Cubs couldn’t carry that momentum into Sunday. Justin Steele‘s burst of frustration didn’t immediately become the rallying cry some fans hoped it would be.

Turning around this season will take more than that, and it will have to come in a shorter period of time than if the Cubs had figured out how to get back on track in June. The front office is using this period before the July 30 trade deadline to evaluate things, and Hoyer has not ruled out actually doing some selling in the next month.

If they want this group to remain intact once the calendar flips to August, they have to meet that simple (yet clearly difficult) objective: Just win some baseball games.

“The sense of urgency has been there. It’s still there,” Hendricks said. “We’re focused on the day to day. We have the best in the business there surrounded around us for the front office. That’s what they do. But we have to take care of our jobs, take care of our business.”

“Just over the halfway point [of the season], there’s a lot of baseball left,” Happ said. “Find a way to string a couple series together here. It’s a game at a time, but we need to win a series and then kind of get on a little bit of a run here and win some of those. We’ve struggled to win the first game of the series. Had a couple games like [Sunday] where it’s, got a chance to win the series and get some momentum going and don’t get it done. So, we’re going to have to string a few wins together and see what we can do.