Another 'L' leaves Cubs a game closer to selling at the trade deadline

As long as the sell-off hasn’t commenced and they’ve got a chance to turn the season around (however small it is), the Chicago Cubs will go out to try to climb back up the standings.

But the tough position they’ve put themselves in is certainly not lost on them.

“We started the year well, and then it turned into a little bit of a funk, and then now it’s turned into something more than a funk,” Jameson Taillon said last Friday after the Cubs series-opening loss to the Milwaukee Brewers. “It needs to change — or things are going to change.”

Since Taillon spoke, the Cubs have lost three of four and have dropped to nine games under .500 (39-48). With Wednesday night’s 5-3 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies, they’ve fallen 13 games back in the division and six back in the National League wild card race.

If they can’t avoid a sweep by the Phillies on Thursday, they’ll match the 2023 squad’s lowest point in terms of their win/loss records. When the 2023 group hit 10 games under .500 in early June, that was rock bottom. There were probably few outside of that clubhouse who thought the Cubs had a real shot at clawing their way back in time to convince president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer not to sell at the deadline.

Of course, that group did it. They rattled off a bunch of wins, including eight straight at the end of July, and they earned the right to keep playing together past the deadline. An optimistic person could use last year’s turnaround as a reason to remain hopeful in 2024, but the Cubs aren’t necessarily looking at it the same way.

“I don’t think we can compare our team to last year,” Seiya Suzuki said through interpreter Toy Matsushita. “You gotta take into consideration just the different situation we’re in right now. A lot of the guys are in different grooves. We’re just trying to find ways to get the win. We’re still searching for what’s going to make us click, and I know we’re going to find it, so we’re just going to keep on working.”

The Cubs haven’t lost confidence in the group — at least that’s how they’ll talk about their situation publicly — even as they continue to struggle on the field.

“I think it’s just baseball,” Shota Imanaga said through interpreter Edwin Stanberry. “There are just going to be times when you’re 100 percent, everybody’s playing well, and you might still not win. Same thing applies the other way, where you might not feel 100 percent, but you still manage to get the win. I think right now, we’re just pushing through it, and I think it’s going to get better.”

“This is a tough league,” Justin Steele said. “It’s tough to get wins in this league. I just feel like, as a whole, even myself, we can just do things a little bit better to win ballgames. I think everyone in here knows that we’re perfectly capable of doing that, and we plan on doing it.”

Now, though, it’s to the point where confidence won’t lead to anything if the team on the field can’t start picking up ‘W’s right now.

It’s not going to be easy with who the Cubs have coming up. They had a softer part of their schedule in June, but they managed just an 11-16 record that month and now have the likes of the Baltimore Orioles, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Kansas City Royals and the Brewers coming up in July.

Instead of talking about who they might be able to add at the July 30 trade deadline to help them make a push to the playoffs, someone like Cody Bellinger will spend the next few weeks getting asked about his future with the Cubs and if he’ll still be around in August.

“It feels like it’s a little different this year,” Bellinger said about potential trade rumors coming ahead of the deadline. “But just like last year, I mean, I’m definitely not going think about it. I feel like, just like everything, it’s a distraction to what you need to accomplish. I won’t think about it and just take it day by day.”

Cubs manager Craig Counsell has said he tries not to discuss the trade deadline and trade rumors with players unless he feels a conversation is truly warranted. He trusts that, as professionals, they understand that the business side of the job exists and won’t let that get in the way of playing the games ahead of them.

That’s the feeling in the clubhouse, too. You’ll hear the players talk all the time about controlling what they can control. That’s especially true now, when Hoyer and Co. are the ones making decisions on where the players will end up.

“We’re focused on day to day here, focused on what we have to do to play that day and to go and compete,” Ian Happ said. “We’ll let the guys upstairs figure that out.”

Walking into the clubhouse before every game, you’ll see guys going in and out of the room as they move onto whatever is next in their pregame routine. The players look to have already moved on from whatever happened the game before and are preparing to try to get a win that day.

Still, it’s tough not to feel the disappointment in the room. Whether it’s because of another loss on a given day or just the overall feeling from the last two-plus months of baseball, nobody is happy about where the Cubs are at right now.

And unless some magical turnaround comes in the next few weeks, the playoff thoughts they entered the season with will become reflections and questions about what went wrong.

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