Lineup shuffle can’t stop offense woes, Cubs drop 7 straight

Craig Counsell’s lineup got a shakeup on Saturday. After six straight Cubs losses, it was time to shift things around. Pete Crow-Armstrong moved up to the leadoff spot, Nico Hoerner to cleanup, and Alex Bregman and Michael Busch moved up in the order. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, Ian Happ got a day off. He’s batting .107 in his last seven games with 15 strikeouts in 28 at-bats.

“There wasn’t much thought to it, I think shakeup was probably the thing we were after,” Counsell said. “What you’re doing when you do that is just kind of giving guys a different look in terms of when they’re going up there.”

The lineup and the looks for the batters might have been different, but the result wasn’t. The Cubs mustered three hits, all singles, and got shut out by the Astros on Saturday for their seventh straight loss.

“I’m sure it’s going to happen a few times this year,” Crow-Armstrong said of the shuffled lineup. “Whatever the lineup is, we have to do a better job of capitalizing the guys on base, picking the spots to run, but you know, I appreciate [Counsell’s] willingness to shake it up a bit.”

During this 13-game stretch in which the Cubs have won just twice, they have scored only 33 runs and have been shut out four times. Their current seven game losing streak is the longest for the Cubs since they lost 10 in a row in June 2022. At some point, Counsell had to make changes to his lineup, and even if Saturday’s outcome felt like more of the same from the offense, he couldn’t continue to roll out the same group in the same order every day.

In Happ’s case, the need to give him a day off had grown increasingly apparent, and Counsell said he had a conversation with Happ about sitting after Friday’s game. Happ went 1-for-5 with a double but struck out twice. In each of his last six games, Happ has struck out at least two times.

“The thing that was most clear from yesterday is we just need to give Ian a break,” Counsell said. “We’ve got a lot of guys not hitting, that’s kind of why we’re in the middle of this [losing streak]. But I think Ian’s probably feeling it the most, so he’s the guy we’re giving a break to.”

Happ has been one of the more consistent Cubs hitters in the last decade, steadily getting on base at a .343 clip no matter what his batting average is while also putting up around 20 home runs and at least 30 doubles every season. His walk rate and power numbers are higher this year than they’ve ever been in his career, but the strikeouts are piling up. After Friday’s game, Happ’s strikeout rate was 33.2%, the highest he’s posted since 2018.

“You kind of decipher if it was poor pitch selection of if you got pitched great,” Happ told CHGO. “As a hitter, the hardest thing to accept is that the other guys get paid too, and they’re really good. So there’s times when you might just get aced on a handful of good pitches, and you have to accept that. There’s also days when you miss your pitch to hit a couple of times, and that’s a more frustrating one to figure out.”

As a part of the offensive shakeup, the Cubs called up a pair of prospects. Infielder Pedro Ramirez, slashing .312/.395/.547 this year in Triple-A, was called up on Friday, and outfielder Kevin Alcantara was recalled on Saturday. Neither player was in the lineup for game two of this weekend’s series against the Astros, but Counsell said there’s purpose behind that.

“I think specifically for Pedro, you’re in spring training so you’re around the guys [and] you know the guys. It’s the organization of the day and the preparation for a game is just vastly different than in spring training,” he said. “So you’re giving them kind of a window into that, and I think that’s important to understand and to feel, probably more than anything.”

Alcantara has been up with the big league club before; once for a brief stint at the end of the 2024 season and again for a longer stay last September. He batted .364 in 11 at-bats last fall, and he’s clubbed 15 home runs for Triple-A Iowa already this season.

The call-up for Alcantara this time around is less about getting him comfortable at the major league level. Counsell said Alcantara is much more likely to get looks at the plate and in the outfield, given the times he’s already been called up. For an offense starved of late for the big hit, Alcantara might be the bat they need.

“See the ball and hit it hard, that’s what my mindset was,” Alcantara said via interpreter Fredy Quevedo, Jr. of his at-bats thus far this season. “I practiced that mainly in spring training. I wasn’t necessarily practicing that much when I was in the league in the minors, but yea, my mindset was see the ball and hit it hard.”

Both Alcantara and Ramirez got at-bats as pinch hitters on Saturday; Alcantara struck out swinging to end the seventh inning, and Ramirez ended the eighth with a first-pitch groundout to second base. Ramirez is not expected to be with the big league club for long, probably just until Matt Shaw returns from the 10-day injured list, and while with the team, he isn’t expected to be a regular in the lineup. Pinch-hit appearances and maybe a spot start are the most likely chances for Ramirez.

Alcantara’s stay in Chicago could be just as brief. Happ might have been out of Saturday’s lineup, but he is not going to sit on a regular basis, and backup outfielder Michael Conforto has hit the ball well when he’s gotten looks. Because of that, Alcantara likely isn’t going to get consistent chances to be in the lineup. The only possible scenario that has him sticking around is if Moises Ballesteros is optioned to Triple-A to give him a chance to bust out of his offensive slump.

But ultimately, it won’t be Alcantara and Ramirez who lift the Cubs out of the mire they’re in. They need the veteran batters to start hitting again, no matter where they are in the lineup.

“We’ve struggled as a team for two weeks here, and while frustrating, it’s still two weeks,” Counsell said. “We’re going to come out of this, it’s going to be fine. We’re a good baseball team. It’s all going to happen, but while you go through it, you have to sit in some discomfort with it, and that doesn’t feel good.”