As Cubs' offense struggles to score, postseason hopes dwindle

Just as the Chicago Cubs’ playoff hopes — however slim they were — seemed to be coming back to life, they have dwindled again.

Following Saturday’s 2-0 loss to the New York Yankees, FanGraphs has the Cubs’ chances of reaching the postseason at less than 1 percent. Six days ago, coming off back-to-back sweeps in Pittsburgh and Washington, their chances were almost 7 percent.

Those were still small odds, but as September began, the Cubs were at least playing the kind of baseball necessary to keep themselves in the playoff picture.  But familiar problems plagued the Cubs in both of the first two games of this weekend’s series against New York. The offense mustered one hit all afternoon en route to a 3-0 loss Friday, and Saturday, they managed four hits but never scored and only once got a baserunner past first base. 

“It was a similar day to yesterday, unfortunately,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “Just unable to get multiple runners on base [and] create a rally. We didn’t really have good scoring opportunities.”

The one time the Cubs did get someone in scoring position, it was a two-out triple by Patrick Wisdom in the fifth inning, but he was stranded there by a Christian Bethancourt pop-up. Twice the Cubs tried moving a runner to second on stolen base attempts — Nico Hoerner in the fourth inning and Pete Crow-Armstrong in the fifth — but both runners were thrown out. After Seiya Suzuki’s two-out walk in the sixth inning, the Cubs didn’t put another man on base.

“A day like today, you try to get aggressive, try to get guys in scoring position so a hit can score them, because it’s hard to get multiple hits on a day like today,” Ian Happ said. 

Happ was the only Cubs’ batter to reach base more than once on Saturday. Starter Javier Assad and relievers Drew Smyly, Tyson Miller, and Shawn Armstrong limited the Yankees to the two runs, one of which was scored because of a throwing error by Bethancourt. However, with the wind blowing in like it was on Saturday and with the Cubs’ offense sputtering, two runs were enough. 

The weather at Wrigley Field has been a factor that has worked both for and against Cubs teams for decades, but on Friday, Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer noted he felt like the difference for his team from 2023 to 2024 offensively might have at least a little something to do with the Wrigley winds.

“This ballpark makes it that much more confusing to figure out,” Hoyer said of his offense. “Depending on how you look at numbers, we’re 28th at home offense and top ten in road offense. Some of that is probably randomness, and some of that is probably the fact that the wind is blowing in virtually every day this year.”

The weather on Saturday made Wrigley a pitcher-friendly ballpark and kept the Yankees from adding even more runs — both Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge were robbed of potential homers.

Stanton hit a ball 390 feet with a 110 mph exit velocity in the sixth inning that Statcast estimates would have been a homer in more than half of the 30 major league ballparks. Judge clubbed one 387 feet at 108 mph off of his bat in the seventh inning that landed safely in Crow-Armstrong’s glove in center field.

Those are frustrating outcomes for the Yankees, but if you’re the visiting team, you can tolerate the wind robbing a few runs for a three-game series and then get out of town. Former Cub Anthony Rizzo said on Friday that he knew to watch Lake Michigan on the bus ride in to get a sense for what to expect at the ballpark that day.

But for the Cubs, this is their long-standing reality. Wrigley, for all its charm, can be particularly challenging and quirky to navigate weather-wise, maybe even more so than any other park in baseball. And it could be the case that some of the dropoff in offense from last season to this one is because the Friendly Confines have favored the guys on the mound in 2024.

“The park feels like, and this is just my suggestion, that it has played pitcher-friendly more often than hitter-friendly,” Counsell said. “It sounds like, from what I’ve heard, is that last year was kind of the opposite.

“I think the best thing we can do is we have to be prepared to play in both situations as best we can.”

Counsell, who managed against the Cubs for years while at the helm in Milwaukee and who played for six different teams in his playing career, has seen firsthand how different other ballparks around the league can be. He said Wrigley is uniquely challenging, but it’s also not a new challenge to a Cubs team and not something that he is going to lean on as a reason for why his team lags behind the rest of the league in home runs and slugging percentage (19th-ranked in both).

“It’s not an excuse about performance at all. It just does offer different conditions,” Counsell said.

The wind didn’t keep the Cubs’ offense from stringing hits together or getting multiple baserunners in an inning on Saturday — Yankees pitching did. The Cubs put a runner on base in five of the first six innings, but never more than one at a time. The only time they got two hits in a row, it was in the fifth inning when Crow-Armstrong singled and then got thrown out trying to steal second base right before Wisdom’s triple to right field.

Regardless of weather factors, the Cubs offense lacks the kind of power threat seen in the other dugout this series. In the Yankees lineup, both Judge and Juan Soto have an OPS over 1.000. Wind or not, that kind of offensive production creates runs. New York is first in the league in home runs and ranks behind only the Baltimore Orioles in slugging percentage.

The Cubs might still have a chance to shock the National League wild card field and slip into the playoffs during the final weeks of the season, but the most likely scenario is the same offense that has come up short for much of the 2024 season will be the reason this campaign ends before the postseason.

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