Justin Steele demonstrates Cubs' passion amidst frustrating season

MILWAUKEE – When a season is going badly, it’s natural to look for a turnaround moment.

After Friday night’s frustrating 4-2 loss to the Brewers that dropped the Chicago Cubs to seven games below .500, fans took to Twitter/X to share video from June 2007 when then manager Lou Pinella got tossed from a game arguing a call at third base. 

In hindsight, it’s easy to point to that moment and say it made a difference. After that game, the Cubs went on to a 17-11 record in June and, at the end of the season, their first playoff appearance in four years. 

Seventeen years later, the Cubs are having a similarly frustrating first half of 2024 — one that has fans looking for visible signs the guys in uniform are feeling some competitive fire. Obviously, time will tell if it makes a difference in the big picture of this season, but Justin Steele gave that visible sign after the third inning of Saturday’s 5-3 win over the Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Field.

The Cubs needed just two pitches to jump to a 2-0 lead in the first inning — Nico Hoerner hit a leadoff single and Michael Busch hit a two-run homer — but that lead was erased by defensive misplays in the third inning.

In particular, Steele tried getting Milwaukee’s Sal Frelick out in a rundown between second and third base after snagging a comebacker, but the Cubs failed to get the out. That instead resulted in two runners in scoring position with one out for Steele. Brice Turang then laid down a bunt in front of the mound that Steele tried to barehand, but he couldn’t get the ball to first.

That scored Frelick from third, and then the tying run scored on a William Contreras bloop single that fell in shallow center field, in between three Cubs defenders. 

As he reentered the dugout, Steele was visibly upset and shouted to his teammates. After the game, he said he wished he had kept his emotions in check better, but that moment was a visible representation of what fans and players alike have been feeling for the last two months of Cubs baseball.

“I love every single person in that locker room, and I know how good we can be,” Steele said postgame. “I know what it takes, and it definitely comes from a good place. It comes from a place of love and passion. I want to win baseball games. That’s what I show up every day to do.”

“Guy’s competing. Wants to win. Frustrated with how he’s giving up runs there in that situation, and he’s giving everything he has out there,” Ian Happ said. “He’s been really good for how many starts in a row now. He’s been competing and going deep into games, and that’s raw emotion.”

The Cubs sat at 18-12 on May 1 and just a half game out of first place in the division. For two months since, they’ve gone 21-33 and have slid to the bottom of the National League Central. It’s been a long stretch of baseball where the Cubs have struggled to hit with runners in scoring position and struggled to get high leverage outs late in close games. 

All of that has painted the team into something of a corner as the trade deadline sits just about a month away. It’s too far off to look for the Cubs’ front office to make any deals at this moment, and as team president Jed Hoyer told reporters in Milwaukee on Friday, the way the team has played for the past two months might mean the trade deadline approach will have to change.

“We need to play a lot better,” Hoyer said. “Now we’ve dug ourselves a hole, and we have to dig out of that hole. And obviously, yes, it’s important that we do that in this next [32 days] until the deadline.”

Steele’s display of emotion in the Cubs dugout on Saturday might have been just because of how the third inning played out.

He was reluctant to get into the weeds about it. Steele alluded to the fact that moments like this are usually kept out of sight of spectators and between teammates in a private setting. Over the course of a long season, especially a disappointing one, frustrations are bound to boil over in the confines of a single game.

But it could be more than that. The Cubs have had to play on their heels for most of the season, and feelings are going to build up. Like everyone watching from the seats, Steele feels the importance of getting the season turned around. But unlike those watching, he feels the weight of doing his part to make it happen.

All players are competitive, even if it manifests itself differently. Steele can be fiery and will celebrate big outs, but a display like Saturday’s is rare for the usually easygoing Mississipian. He wasn’t entirely alone, either. Luke Little celebrated a key tag at the end of a successful rundown at home that closed out the seventh inning.

“There’s guys that are calm, there’s guys that are even, there’s guys that are excited and pissed,” Happ said. “There’s all forms of that in this game. You have so many different guys from so many different backgrounds, and how it comes off in some of those moments, you see it boil over, for sure. You see guys get pissed, slam stuff. That happens.

It’s an intense game, but I think every guy in this clubhouse is competing and wants to win baseball games every single day, and when you’re going through a stretch like we are, that frustration is real.”

In that moment, Steele was publicly vocal. For what it’s worth, he tossed a quality start as the Cubs went on to win thanks to three scoreless innings from the bullpen and a two-run home run from Happ in the eighth inning.

Steele’s emotion after the third inning, if nothing else, was something Cubs fans probably needed to see. Whether or not that moment and Saturday’s game becomes a turning point remains to be seen.