Michael Busch had a fantastic 2025 season and a breakout postseason performance, leading to high expectations for this year. The first baseman led last year’s team with 34 home runs and a 140 wRC+, but now he’s the poster boy for a struggling offense as Busch and nearly half the starting lineup is killing the Chicago Cubs through two weeks of the 2026 season.
Busch began the year going 4-for-8, with two walks against the Washington Nationals, but since then, the left-handed hitter has been only 2-for-40 at the plate, with 10 strikeouts in the past 11 games. In Friday’s series opener against the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was 0-for-5, with a pair of strikeouts in the Cubs’ 2-0 loss.
It’s been so bad that Craig Counsell has already removed Busch from the leadoff spot, but that hasn’t helped Busch either, as he’s currently riding a 27 at-bat hitless streak in his last seven games. During that stretch, he’s only reached base twice via walks and has one sac-fly, while striking out seven times.
Overall, this season Busch is slashing .125/.232/.167, with no home runs in 56 plate appearances. He currently has a 25 wRC+, dead last on the Cubs and eighth worst among all qualified hitters. So yeah, it’s not really a big surprise that the offense looks rough when your best hitter suddenly becomes your worst, and he’s the guy getting the most plate appearances. However, Busch isn’t the only one to blame because Alex Bregman, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Dansby Swanson have also been atrocious to begin the year.
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Alex Bregman: .192/.276/.327, 2 HR, 3 RBI, 77 wRC+
Pete Crow-Armstrong: .216/.245/.294, 1 HR, 4 RBI, 55 wRC+
Dansby Swanson: .140/.269/.233, 1 HR, 5 RBI, 54 wRC+
At the very least, Bregman is getting on base even if he’s not hitting yet. And yes, I know, he’s hitting the ball hard and is getting unlucky. However, Bregman has been hitting the ball on the ground more often so far in 2026 and is hitting fewer line drives.
Swanson and Crow-Armstrong are going to provide value on defense, so it’s not like you’re going to suddenly bench them because of their numbers at the plate. Swanson has also had some tough luck with his hard-hit balls as he’s only slugging .233, but has an expected slugging % of .378.
I’ll give Moises Ballesteros a break for now. He’s a 22-year-old rookie, and despite posting only a .583 OPS through 33 plate appearances, he has the biggest gap between slugging and expected slugging, according to Baseball Savant. The left-handed hitter has a .310 slugging %, but with an 18.2 barrel % and 50% hard-hit rate, he has an expected .464 slugging %. The 154-point difference is the highest above Swanson.
We saw a perfect example of the tough luck for Ballesteros on Friday. He smoked a ball to the left-center field gap that had an exit velocity of 103mph. Surely, that would drop, and with two outs, it would have cleared the bases. Instead, it was caught to end the inning.
And that’s pretty much the story of the Cubs’ offense so far in 2026. The team ranks fourth in MLB with a 44.2 hard-hit rate, but the Cubs rank 22nd with a .220 batting average and a below-average wRC+ of 96. They have scored 56 runs in 13 games, which at 4.3 runs per game ranks 12th in MLB, but that’s deceiving because 26 of those 56 runs have been scored in three games. In the other 10 games, the Cubs are averaging three runs.
Things will turn around soon, right? RIGHT???
