Some ways down the road, when the Cubs return to safety squeezes, “productive outs” and all the other ‘thrilling’ aspects colloquially known as NL baseball, we’re going to miss the two weeks when they were scoring almost eight runs a game.
Buried in all the hand-wringing that comes with a 2-7 road trip is the fact that the Cubs once again have one of baseball’s best offenses. As of Tuesday, the Cubbies ranked:
- 4th in wRC+ (125)
- 3rd in wOBA (.374)
- 5th in SLG (.486)
- 7th in ISO (.197)
- 7th in HRs (18)
- 3rd in total runs (72)
The list goes on and on. It’s an alarming juxtaposition when put next to the Cubs ugly win-loss record.
“We’ve had a lot of high-run scoring games,” Manager Joe Maddon said after the Cubs’ 10-0 win over Pittsburgh. “And we’ve lost some of them - that’s the awkward part of this. We’ve scored a lot of runs in a couple different games and not won. So we’ll take it - the offense for the most part has been percolating. We need to get the pitching reestablished and once it does we have a pretty good shot.”
It’s not without historical precedent either:
It’d be easy to take the short way out and point out that hey, getting perennial MVP candidate Kris Bryant back makes everyone around him better. It’s not entirely untrue, either. Merely having his presence in the lineup changes how the Cubs are pitched.
However, ask anyone who’s watched the Cubs this year and they’ll be quick to point out that so far, Kris Bryant is hitting .252/.347/.402. He only has five extra base hits in 48 plate appearances and has been about 14% worse than league average at the dish.
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It’s not especially surprising, even though Bryant’s individual performance and the team’s offensive output were joined at the hip last season. As is almost always the case, the answer to the Cubs’ offensive turnaround was never going to lie with one player. Instead, it’s the individual adjustments being made throughout the batting order that’s what’s really making a difference.
Look no further than Willson Contreras -- who’s drawing walks at double the rate he was last year -- or Jason Heyward, who hit the same amount of home runs (2) on Friday night in Milwaukee as he did the entire second half of 2018. Kyle Schwarber’s not biting on offspeed pitches as often this year, either.
Last year, not one Cubs hitter barreled more than 12% of the balls they put in play. So far, Schwarber (17%), Contreras (16%) and Baez (14%) are all mashing. As a team, they’ve raised their average exit velocity over two miles per hour.
“I know we’re hitting the ball pretty good,” Baez said. “So [the bad record] is not a big deal for us. Like I said in the last interview, there’s a lot of power hitters here, and we usually warm up out of the first half. Hitting the ball this early and this good is a good sign for us.”
It’s hard to take much away from 35-45 plate appearances. Ben Zobrist isn’t likely to carry a .407 BABIP all summer, and I’d be shocked if Heyward can sustain his Mike Troutsian slugging percentage. But in a season mostly devoid of optimism through 2 weeks, seeing so many Cubs players make meaningful adjustments in the margins should be just as exciting as seeing a healthy Kris Bryant every day.
“[The offense] is one of the things in the first week we’ve been really encouraged about,” Zobrist added. “We want to keep that up. If we do that a lot, we’re going to win a lot of games.”