Are Cubs in trouble?
Around the season’s one-third mark, Chicago finds itself fighting through the shadow of its magical 2016, but the team is upbeat.
Ordinarily this would be a promising spring on Chicago’s North Side.
The Cubs have periodically poked their noses into first place in the National League Central. On Memorial Day they had a winning record. They have muscular youth throughout their lineup — and more of it coming.
Before general manager Theo Epstein and manager Joe Maddon came to town, the Cubs had played in the postseason six times since 1945.
And, true, some Cubs fans are so everlastingly grateful for the 2016 World Series championship that they feel too sheepish to ask for more.
But as May approached June and the Cubs Way began to look like the Way Back, the questions turned harder.
“If you want to freak out, go ahead,” Maddon said cheerfully after the Cubs were swept at Dodger Stadium over the weekend. Some will take him up on that. The series might well be a footnote by the fall, but the Dodgers were the Cubs’ six-game victim in the National League Championship Series in 2016, and, along with the Washington Nationals, appear to be their strongest rivals in 2017.
The Dodgers also handled the Cubs with ominous ease. They allowed the Cubs two hits Friday and three Saturday, and all five hits were singles. The Cubs wounded Clayton Kershaw on Sunday, but the Dodgers responded with four home runs, driving Jon Lester off the mound in the fourth inning of a 9-4 win.
“It’s obviously an average start,” said Kris Bryant, the reigning National League MVP, after the Cubs sank to 25-24.
“Last year we won, but we had a target on our back coming out of spring training,” said Carl Ed- wards Jr., the reliever who is built like an exclamation point and has given up six hits in 18 innings as he sets up closer Wade Davis.
“It was set in stone, kind of like a book. We haven’t started out like last year, but we’re getting it together. It was a long season, you’ve got to understand. We played into November. I didn’t pick up a ball until January. But by the beginning or the middle of June, we’ll get it together.”
The shadow of the 2016 Cubs has turned out to be more chilling than anyone realized. Maddon said he saw no lack of motivation in spring training.
“They weren’t walking around (like) peacocks, basking in what they’d done,” he said.
But the sheer demand of matching what became a 103-58 season, which piggybacked onto a 97-win season in 2015, is bringing some self-fulfilling questions.
“We spoiled ourselves with that start last year, but I guess it’s good that everyone has expectations, because we do, too,” Bryant said.
“I never thought we’d follow the same path as last year,” Maddon said. “People talk about how we were 18 games over .500 right out of the gate, but nobody remembers that we played .500 from that point until the All-Star break. That period of mediocrity doesn’t get recognized.
“The only thing I worry about is fatigue, and that’s why I think rest is the key to everything we do. Our record isn’t awful. We’ve been in nearly every game. I think if we pitch and catch the way we can, everything will take care of itself.”
The Cubs were 35-14 in 2016. Then they were 53-35 at the AllStar break. From there they won 37 of their next 52 and were 9050 on Sept. 9.
The problem is pitching. The Cubs had an ERA of 2.60 at this stage last season. Their 49-game ERA this year was 4.04.
Jake Arrieta was 9-0 with a 1.72 ERA then. He’s 5-4 with a 4.92 ERA now. Lester was 5-3, 2.26 and is now 3-3, 3.86. John Lackey, who didn’t get to the fifth inning in Los Angeles, was 5-2, 3.16 and is now 4-5, 5.18.
All have shown flashes. Lester pitched a four-hit complete game against the San Francisco Giants on May 23. Arrieta pitched decently against the Dodgers, but when he shook off catcher Willson Contreras and threw a 3-1 fastball to Adrian Gonzalez, he gave up a mammoth home run to deep center that pushed the Dodgers’ margin to 4-0.
“I expect to locate better than I did there,” Arrieta said. “But I try to keep this thing in perspective because I know how hard this game is. I’ve gone through some delivery adjustments, with some fine-tuning. Tonight it was pretty good. I’m not exactly where I’d like to be, but it’s close.”
The Cubs also are missing center fielder Dexter Fowler, who signed with the St. Louis Cardinals as a free agent. Fowler has struggled offensively this season but the Cubs haven’t replaced his defense or leadoff production. They were 80-38 when Fowler started in 2016.
Chicago’s 37 errors are tied with the San Diego Padres for most in the National League. Last year the Cubs were runaway leaders in Runs Saved (per Baseballreference.com) with 96. This year they have saved 10, second in the NL to the Cincinnati Reds, but they aren’t winning games with their gloves as they did in 2016.
On offense, there isn’t a great deal of difference. Bryant and Anthony Rizzo have about the same numbers as they had 12 months ago. Ben Zobrist is hitting .261 instead of .351, but his slugging is comparable to 2016.
The Cubs hoped they’d get a boost from Kyle Schwarber, who was hurt in the second game of the 2016 season and didn’t return until the World Series, when he hit .412. He is hitting .177 and is no longer the leadoff man.
“He goes up to the plate and sees those numbers everywhere on the scoreboard,” Maddon said. “I don’t want to give him too many at-bats if he’s not swinging well.”
After Saturday’s 5-0 win, which featured six strong innings from Brandon McCarthy, Dodgers catcher Yasmani Grandal provided his own scouting report.
“We had a good mix of pitches today,” Grandal said. “It just so happened that they (Cubs) kept swinging out of the zone. So why even bother to go somewhere else? It looked at times that they were trying to make an adjustment, but they’d adjust for a pitch or two and then go back to the same thing.
“It was more about reading body language, seeing what they wanted to do in the box. They have really good contact guys who can work the count and their power guys can work the count as well. It just seemed like last year it was more of seeing all these power numbers, guys with a ton of RBI, and you get away from sequencing or pitching to our strengths. So, these two days, we’ve been attacking the strike zone.”
Have the Cubs lost the fear factor in one-third of the encore season? They have 110 games or so to reinforce it, and many prime-time years to turn it into monuments. They do see that hovering around .500 is not lovable behavior in Wrigleyville, not anymore.