After brief reset, Ian Happ homers in return to Cubs' lineup

At the end of the Chicago Cubs‘ last homestand, Ian Happ didn’t shy away from acknowledging the struggles he’d been going through for an extended stretch.

Happ was on fire through his first 10 games, slashing .350/.458/.475 with a 172 wRC+. But in the 25 games he played from April 9 through May 8, he didn’t look like the same hitter. He’d had some solid days mixed in — including a a 5-for-10 showing in a three-game set against the Milwaukee Brewers two weekends ago — but overall, he just didn’t have the results. In those 25 games, he slashed .169/.295/.225 with a 62 wRC+.

“Working through some stuff,” Happ said at the end of that stretch. “It’s a long season. A little bit of a tough stretch. Taking the walks still and getting on base, so trying to take the positives out of that and get to a place where I’m hitting the ball hard.”

He had a better performance in Pittsburgh last weekend, but following an 0-for-4 showing with three strikeouts in Atlanta on Monday, his season numbers dropped to .219/.333/.301 with a 91 wRC+. Cubs manager Craig Counsell felt it necessary to then give his left fielder a breather for the last two games of that series.

“I made the decision to do it,” Counsell said. “You use it, essentially, to just give the player a break from having to perform. You come to the park when you’re struggling, there’s [the thought of], ‘I gotta go and do it again for the guys.’ Just to give a break from that I think is helpful.”

Everyone should remember the mental reset Seiya Suzuki got in early August last season. He was kept out of the lineup for few games before returning Aug. 9, and from that point forward, he produced like one of the very best hitters in baseball (1.086 OPS and a 187 wRC+ from then through the end of the season).

Happ’s reset was even more brief, but Counsell believed that time off could still help him gain a little bit of perspective that “everything that’s happening is really not that bad.” He’s confident that even a short break can be beneficial in the mental aspect of the game.

Happ didn’t disagree.

“Just a couple days there to clear my head,” he said. “I think the results sometimes get challenging to deal with on a daily basis. Obviously, we have a pretty deep outfield, so a couple days just to take a blow and watch a little bit of baseball.”

It wasn’t long before Happ showed his short time off could be exactly what he needed.

On just the second pitch he saw from Pittsburgh Pirates starter Jared Jones on Thursday, he belted a 96.4 mph four-seamer middle-in down the right-field line. The ball stayed fair long enough to bounce off the foul pole, giving Happ just his second home run of the season and his first in exactly a month.

Homering off the four-seamer was more of what he’d actually been doing well at the plate this season. Entering Thursday, he was hitting .333 and slugging .500 against fastballs in 2024.

Other pitches were where Happ’s struggles had come. He was hitting .114 and .103 against offspeed pitches and breaking balls, respectively. His slugging percentages against those pitch groups matched his batting averages, as he had zero extra-base hits on anything other than fastballs.

Happ had seen an uptick in breaking balls in May (27.3 percent) compared to April (21.2 percent), and that trend continued Thursday. Of the 13 pitches he saw from Pittsburgh pitchers, nine were breakers.

But Happ felt he saw the ball better this time around.

He noted his taking a curveball just before being all over the four-seamer in his first at-bat. There were other examples — like taking a low-and-in slider in his second at-bat, hitting a hard ground ball with a .420 expected batting average on a slider that Pirates first baseman Connor Joe made a nice play on in his third at-bat, and laying off a pair of low-and-in sweepers in his fourth at-bat — that help illustrate that point.

Happ didn’t get a hit in his three at-bats after the home run, and he did strikeout with the tying run on second in the bottom of the eighth as the Cubs dropped the series opener, 5-4. But some of those things that don’t show up in the box score gave him confidence that he is beginning to turn things around.

“I think seeing the ball well, that first curveball taken and then being right on the fastball,” Happ said. “I think even the other at-bats, not the result that I wanted, but really good takes, swinging at the right pitches and feeling like I was right on it.”

“Hit a couple balls hard tonight, which was great,” Counsell said. “Just a good feeling for him, I think, more than anything. Squaring two balls up really good, hitting them very hard. So, good first step.”

Those two days off gave Happ a chance to reflect and work on things without the added pressure of performing on the field, and he showed signs of possibly better things to come Thursday night.

Will that mental reset prove to be a turning point in his season? That remains to be seen, but in the end, it’s on Happ to show it was the right move.

“There’s no guarantees that it’s what fixes you,” Counsell said, “and ultimately, it’s going to be Ian swinging at good pitches and things like that. But you do it because you come back and I think you’re in a better place and refreshed a little bit, especially mentally.”

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