Last season’s Chicago Cubs were legendary. This season’s Chicago Cubs are, well, nothing to write home about right now.
After exorcising their demons of 108 years last November, the expectations for the 2017 Cubs were through the roof. A young team had just defied the laws of baseball and coasted through the regular season and most of the playoffs en route to a World Series title. With such a young team having championship mettle already, the regular season before another appearance in the Fall Classic was a formality, right?
So far, that hasn’t been the case. This team is currently just a shell of last year’s team. And it’s important to examine why: They’re facing a ton of adversity, something that they really haven’t ever faced as a collective team before.
Injuries and missing starters, a complete 180 (for the worse) from their starting pitching, and a lack of an identity have really hurt this team.
The 2016 Cubs were exceptionally healthy, minus Kyle Schwarber’s ACL injury. Sure, we can use the old rhetoric that injuries aren’t an excuse. And with the depth the Cubs have, they’re better equipped to handle missing starters way more than other teams. But still, the young Cubs have missed games from Kyle Hendricks, Ben Zobrist, Jason Heyward, Addison Russell and now Kris Bryant due to injuries. They’ve lost Schwarber to a demotion, even though he wasn’t much of a contributor when he was up here. They’ve now lost Montero’s presence to DFA status for displaying poor teammate qualities. All this on top of losing Dexter Fowler and David Ross in the offseason. A true leadoff spark and an invaluable veteran leader, no longer on the team.
Said manager Joe Maddon, “It’s hard to create edginess under those circumstances. We’re missing some folks from last year, and we’ve been injured a little bit.”
Because of that, the Cubs have been forced to field a team even younger than expected on some days. For example, on Monday, the average age of their lineup was 24.8 years, which is the youngest lineup fielded in all of baseball this year.
“We have some underclassmen playing right now. So we’re breaking in that group,” Maddon said.
Say what you want about “no excuses”, but that’s a lot to overcome for a team that despite winning a championship last year, is young as hell and has never had to deal with attrition like this before.
What’s more, and this has been covered extensively this season, is the starting pitching has let the team down more often than not this year. The Cubs have allowed 67 first inning runs in 79 games this season. Their first inning ERA is 7.60. Seven point six zero! That’s not a typo.
Jake Arrieta has been wild, John Lackey leads (?) the league in home runs given up, and Eddie Butler has been oh so average. It’s difficult for a team to see themselves either down or losing a lead so quickly almost every game.
And then there’s the overarching fact that this team currently lacks an identity. ESPN’s Jesse Rogers wrote an article where he touches on this a little bit, but at a high level, right now, can you name a single thing the Cubs do exceptionally well?
On offense, their team batting average .238, and it’s much worse with runners in scoring position. They’ve only stolen 24 bases as a team this year, which cites a lack of speed on the base paths. And they’re middle of the pack in the National League in slugging and OPS.
On the mound, their team ERA, while third in the National League, is a not-so-hot 4.04. They’ve blown nine saves in 29 opportunities, which shows an overall pedestrian bullpen minus some really good back-end guys like Wade Davis and Carl Edwards Jr. And we already mentioned the first inning woes.
Last season, they did a lot of things very well, and one could point to their identity being their historically stellar defense. Or their unbelievable starting pitching. Or their prolific run scoring ability. This year, not so much. And that’s why this team has hovered around .500 all year. The lowest they’ve been is two under, and the highest they’ve been is four over. That, my fellow fans, is mediocrity at its finest.
So what do we make out of all this? Are the Cubs doomed?
Nope. This is simply pointing out the fact that the Cubs, despite their talent, just haven’t clicked this year for a variety of reasons. But that’s OK. And here’s why.
Two years ago, nobody expected anything out of the upstart Cubs. But they blossomed during the second half of 2015 and made it to the National League Championship Series. Last year, they just struggled over a small stretch of games before the All Star Break. Next time they truly struggled? Games 1, 3 and 4 in the World Series. But then they won the whole damn thing.
The point is, this collection of players hasn’t known much adversity in their short time playing together. This year, a young team has had to try to overcome a lot. Personal struggles on the field, missing leadership, additional youth, off the field problems, injuries, you name it.
Yes, all teams have to go through these things over the course of a season. I’m not making an excuse for them. But it’s true that the Cubs really haven’t had to go through any of this, until this season. The young guys are getting their first real taste of extended adversity. And it’ll benefit them in the long run.
They can use this experience to understand how to navigate extended slumps, how to fill in for an injured star, how to deal with internal clubhouse conflicts, etc. The fact that their entire roster, the future of this team, is going through this together helps even more. As an added bonus, the NL Central currently sucks, and the Cubs are one game out of first place despite resembling a team #ThatsNotCub.
The Cubs are too talented and have proven themselves as too good to continue to spiral in mediocrity forever. But they’re learning lessons that they’ve never had to learn before. And they’re going to be so much better for it.
