Nothing Is Going Right for the Cubs
“You can’t win the pennant in the first month of the season, but you can lose it.” We’ve heard that axiom a million times, but by God the Chicago Cubs were out to prove it wrong. By close of business on May 8, the Cubbies were 27-12, having just wrapped up their second discrete 10-game winning streak of the season.
Our preseason playoff odds had the Cubs, Pirates, and Brewers in a close three-way fight for the NL Central, all with odds between 24.3% and 35.6%. The Reds and Cardinals were in the single digits, but by no means without hope. Chicago’s odds of winning the division peaked on May 7 at 63.4% — a mighty statement in a division expected to be competitive.
But shouldn’t it have been higher? The Braves got off to just as hot a start, and their odds for winning the division have been in the 80s since the last week of April. The Yankees’ division-winning odds peaked around the same time as Chicago’s, but about 20 points higher.
Even when they were only losing once every two weeks, the Cubs’ lead in the Central never grew beyond 3 1/2 games. And as dominant as Chicago was over the first 39 games of the season, only eight of those games came against intradivisional competition — and the Cubs only went 5-3 in those games.
That meant that when the Cubs were pummeling all comers into the dirt, they weren’t inflicting direct damage upon their competitors… and suffice it to say, that fluke of the schedule has come back to haunt them in a big way.
Since May 9, Chicago is 5-16, including a 10-game losing streak. Since the end of that run, the Cubs have slowed their descent but not arrested it, splitting a four-gamer against the Pirates last week and dropping two of three in St. Louis over the weekend. Add in a three-game sweep by Milwaukee during that losing streak, and the Cubs are now 3-8 against NL Central opposition since their high-water mark. That leaves them at 32-28, with a 13.4% chance of winning the division. And because everyone in said division is over .500 at the moment, the Cubs are now 5 1/2 games out of first place and only 1 1/2 out of the cellar.
Unfortunately for the Cubs, this is neither an industry nor a society in which I can blog about what a shame this is, and how we should all have empathy for this group of guys that looked like the World Series favorite one day and all of a sudden started putting their pants on backwards. And while conceding the broader point that a 10-game losing streak is inherently an all-hands effort, we need someone to blame:
| Hitting | Runs | Rank | BB% | K% | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | xwOBA | wRC+ | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Through May 8 | 215 | 1st | 11.9% | 19.8% | .258 | .354 | .429 | .347 | .339 | 123 | 1st |
| May 9-May 31 | 69 | 26th | 10.0% | 23.8% | .205 | .299 | .311 | .281 | .307 | 79 | 26th |
| Pitching | K% | BB% | K-BB% | Rank | HR/FB | GB% | AVG | ERA | Rank | FIP | xERA |
| Through May 8 | 22.3% | 8.5% | 13.8% | 13th | 12.3% | 42.2% | .223 | 3.75 | 8th | 4.12 | 4.08 |
| May 9-May 31 | 20.1% | 7.7% | 12.3% | 17th | 17.3% | 43.9% | .261 | 5.04 | 27th | 5.02 | 4.88 |
Yeah, that’s pretty damning, isn’t it? The Cubs’ pitching staff is worse overall over the past three weeks than it was during the hot streak, but not by a massive margin. The offense, however, went from literally the best in baseball to the bottom five. As of May 8, the Cubs were scoring 5.51 runs per game, which puts them about on par with the 2001 Mariners and the 2018 Red Sox.
Since then, they’re scoring 3.29 runs per game, which is a scoring rate comparable to that posted by this year’s Ottawa Senators. I regret having to make a cross-sport comparison, but there is no team in major league history that’s scored so infrequently over a full season. At the same time, the Cubs’ wRC+ has dropped from 123 to 79. Last season, Manny Machado and Seiya Suzuki had wRC+ marks of 123, and Kyle Isbel and Daniel Schneemann had 79s. Which really paints a picture.
Mike Petriello of MLB.com had an interesting insight as to what’s happened to the Cubs’ offense over this cold streak: Opposing pitchers have been making them smoke the whole pack of breaking balls in one sitting.
The Cubs account for five of the 10 hitters with the highest breaking ball percentages in the month of May. As a team, the Cubs saw 37% breaking balls last month, which is one of the highest percentages for any team on record.
That’s not a perfect proxy for this slump; the Cubs won the first eight games they played in May, and scored 46 runs along the way. And Mike points out in his post that they actually hit spin quite well in April; I’m not convinced this is a weakness specific to the Cubs.
But it is a weakness almost all hitters share. This season, big league hitters are batting .215 against breaking balls and .261 against fastballs. There’s such a thing as thickening the soup with too much spin, but in general the Cubs have been seeing more pitches that are harder to hit.
And it’s not just getting harder to hit because the Cubs have faced more breaking balls. A big chunk of the Cubs’ run to 27-12 involved taking six of seven from the Phillies in the span of 11 days. The Phillies were in the midst of their own 10-game losing streak at the time, which cost Rob Thomson his job. The Phillies quickly bounced back, maybe because of the managerial change, but also because their run of 13 games against the Cubs and Braves led into a softer part of the schedule.
The Cubs’ schedule over the past three weeks included a trip to Atlanta and a sweep at the hands of the white-hot Brewers, but the teams they’ve faced aren’t as impressive as the individual starting pitchers.
Over the past 21 games, the Cubs have faced four of the top 10 (Jacob Misiorowski, Davis Martin, Braxton Ashcraft, and Paul Skenes) and seven of the top 25 (those three, plus Kyle Harrison, Chris Sale, and Sean Burke) pitchers on the league-wide WAR leaderboard. Plus Jacob deGrom and Spencer Arrighetti, whose 1.34 ERA is second best in the league among pitchers with at least 40 innings.
Five of those nine pitchers blanked the Cubs; another three allowed a single earned run. Collectively, they held the Cubs to a 1.19 ERA and 69 strikeouts against 56 total baserunners in 53 innings. The Cubs went 3-6 in those games.
Which, as you already know if you can subtract, means they went 2-10 in the other 12.
How did that happen?
Well, I mentioned earlier that while the Cubs’ offense had gone totally in the crapper, the pitching hadn’t quite had as rough a go of it. The team-wide ERA dropped from eighth in the league to 27th after the May 8 cutoff, but if you’re looking at FIP and xERA, it’s a difference of less than a run — totally within normal variation for a team over three weeks.
But looking at Chicago’s pitching staff holistically simplifies and obscures the problem. When a good team faceplants as badly as the Cubs have, the first place I usually look is the bullpen. That’s where the margins are finest. If one high-leverage reliever has a bad cold or finds out his girlfriend cheated on him, that could turn two games a week, and make a 100-win team look like a 60-win team over a small sample.
The Cubs’ bullpen, however, has actually been a little better after the high-water mark than before. Phil Maton’s had a couple rough high-leverage appearances with the game tied or the Cubs trailing, but as a staff, they’ve only blown one save out of these 16 losses. This was an OK bullpen before, and it’s an OK bullpen now.
The real problem is in the rotation:
| Starters | Outs/G | K% | BB% | K-BB% | ERA | xERA | FIP | WPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Through May 8 | 15.9 | 23.2% | 7.7% | 15.5% | 3.70 | 3.80 | 3.93 | 1.46 |
| May 9-May 31 | 15.0 | 19.1% | 7.0% | 12.1% | 6.69 | 5.54 | 5.78 | -2.28 |
| Bullpen | Outs/G | K% | BB% | K-BB% | ERA | xERA | FIP | WPA |
| Through May 8 | 11.0 | 21.1% | 9.6% | 11.4% | 3.83 | 4.50 | 4.41 | 1.00 |
| May 9-May 31 | 10.8 | 21.4% | 8.8% | 12.7% | 2.75 | 4.00 | 3.95 | -0.24 |
The Cubs have a case that they’ve been bit by the injury bug; I’d argue that the team’s top four starting pitchers — Matthew Boyd, Cade Horton, Justin Steele, and Edward Cabrera — are all on the IL right now. But Horton and Steele (who’s been out since last April) were already injured long before all this happened. And while Boyd’s meniscus went on sabbatical at the exact moment the Cubs’ fortunes turned, the Cubs had only won two of their previous 11 games when Cabrera got hurt.
Whatever the reason, the Cubs’ rotation has put the offense at a disadvantage it hasn’t been able to overcome. In 10 of their past 21 games, the starter facing the Cubs has thrown at least five innings while allowing, at most, one earned run. Lower the innings threshold to four, and you can make it 13 out of 21.
Over that same span, the Cubs have just three starts of five innings and zero or one earned runs, and just one additional scoreless start of four innings. On seven occasions, the Cubs’ starter allowed more earned runs than he completed innings. On the rare occasions that the Cubs’ starter does pitch well, the offense doesn’t give him any run support.
On Saturday, the Cubs put it all together for a 6-1 win over the Cardinals. Ben Brown threw seven innings and allowed only one run, while striking out six and allowing a walk and three hits. That was the Cubs’ best start, by game score, in the past 21 games.
The Cubs have gotten five other starts with a game score over 55 during this cold streak, including a seven-inning, two-run outing by Shota Imanaga on May 13, and a scoreless four-inning, one-hit, seven-strikeout start from Brown the next day. Over those five games, Cubs starters allowed a 1.98 ERA and a .237 opponent OBP — these are games they should be winning easily.
They went 1-4 in those five games, scoring a total of four runs along the way.
How does a team go from a 112-win pace on May 8 to the verge of the cellar on June 1? The offense goes from the best in the league to among the worst. The starting rotation suffers two key injuries and gets almost nothing out of its healthy pitchers, and when said pitchers do perform well, the ice-cold offense no-shows.
But the Cubs’ defense is still the best in baseball and the bullpen has been mostly fine. So, you know, it could be worse.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
The one positive in this stretch (despite a few memorable lowlights) has been PCA. While the results have been only a bit above average at the plate, he’s sporting the highest hard hit % and lowest chase % (or close to it) of his career over this stretch. He’s pulling the ball less, but even despite that his .405 xWOBA in May suggests good things ahead.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that as well. The chase rate, while still high, is somewhat down this year, and the contact rate has ticked up a bit as well. The walk rate has massively increased, and the OBP would be a career high by a lot (29 BB in 647 PA last year, already 22 BB in 250 PA this year). On top of that, he’s increased his raw bat speed this year, it seems.
These are good signs long-term, probably good prognosticators of true growth, moreso than a hot streak where PCA runs into a few home runs.
Ben Brown would be the other positive. Didn’t have him being the Cubs most reliable starter by June on my 2026 Cubs bingo card. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how he has performed as a starter. Going into the season, I was ready to give up on him as a starter and wanted him to be used as a high leverage reliever. Glad he’s run with the opportunity.
Agree about PCA, but Busch has also been hitting a lot since the early-season doldrums. Bregman’s also improved, and Happ’s been league-average since the slide started. But look at the rest of these numbers:
Hoerner 57 wRC+
Amaya 79
Kelly 87
Swanson 41
Conforto 83
Ballesteros 2
Suzuki 22
I’d subscribe to that blog. Among the many things I appreciate about FanGraphs is there’s a widespread ethos of being sure to remember that baseball is hard, and everyone (well, nearly everyone, we think) is trying to do their very best.
when did we start feeling sorry for professional athletes? A league minimum MLB player makes more in a day than most Americans make in a month. Yeah I really don’t care if they strike out every at bat, they’ll be okay.
Actually, if they strike out in every at bat they won’t make that league minimum for very long, and the money sure doesn’t last forever. Not an amazing situation for someone who probably didn’t go to college, may not have learned much there even if they did, and spent all of their formative years focusing almost exclusively on baseball.
guess they’ll have to get a job like every other able-bodied adult. what a shame
Yep! And then they can spend their days grousing about how envious they are of professional ballplayers
You keep not feeling bad about them, we’ll keep not respecting your opinions due to a lack of empathy (or anything interesting to contribute)and the world will keep turning.
There, we can close the thread folks
I think Lavarnway did contribute something interesting.
We all have limited supply of emotional energy. We have limited resources of both appreciation and empathy to apply.
We enjoy and appreciate the best players succeeding because we like baseball and want to see it performed at the highest level and there are very few who are the best in the world doing what no one else can.
But people struggling despite trying hard every day is mundane. This describes millions of people.
Choosing to apply your limited empathy to struggling MLB players IS a choice and means you’re not applying it somewhere else.
This isn’t the place to debate who is most deserving of empathy. But I, for one, appreciate reminders to stay grounded.
“We have limited resources of both appreciation and empathy to apply.”
Speak for yourself.
There’s a huge gulf between “recognizing the humanity of others and empathizing/sympathizing with their difficulties” and “feeling sorry for” that too often gets conflated.
Everyone deals with BS at their jobs — there’s stress, interpersonal strife, work expectations, etc. — that money doesn’t magically make go away. And, yes, while most of the time, most people will “be okay”, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem. If a theoretical batter struck out every at bat, that would likely take a significant mental and emotional toll on that person. That level of failure would be truly taxing to the well-being of most people.
Life isn’t a competition on whose life is hardest to determine who is truly suffering.
“Life isn’t a competition on whose life is hardest to determine who is truly suffering.”
Cool. So now we’re talking theology…
I am going to be naive and assume you actually don’t understand the many hours of hard work daily and in the off season to be a successful major league player. I am being sincere with this comment as much of the work is hidden from the fans. What they have to do certainly looks like “a job” to me. This in a sport where the odds getting on a minor league roster, let alone reaching the success of the major leagues is small. Most players have to work extremely hard to reach MLB and maintain success. Yes, it is true that many of them don’t feel like they are working … as that is the case if you choose any career wisely. Do a web search on a typical day of a player and you may find it enlightening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srB-F7zSHBw
On top of all that, from about mid-February through September (and sometimes October) these guys essentially don’t have the freedom to take time off for a vacation, wedding, funeral (unless it’s someone in their immediate family) spouse/significant other birthday or special occasion, any type of minor family hardship, be present for their children on a day to day basis, etc. Or just hang out with friends even. You think of all the things that a typical working person has the freedom to do with their ordinary jobs and professional athletes have restrictions that most folks don’t have to deal with.
Their job is an investment in their future freedom, meanwhile they are giving away their prime youth years earning money. We’d all do it in an instant but I guarantee you we wouldn’t all be just the happiest people on the planet those 8 to 9 months of the year. They are compensated very well and they earn that compensation many times over.
Sure let’s just ignore the years of work these guys have to put in just to reach that level of the game, all while the vast majority of them make practically nothing while doing so.
You think you got it bad with your job and pay? Imagine making basically just enough to survive while devoting your entire life, not just 40 hours a week – your literal entire life, to your job just for the 1% chance of making real money.
It’s just so entirely boring to read posts from people filled with the bitterest of envy.
“Since then, they’re scoring 3.29 runs per game…. There is no team in major league history that’s scored so infrequently over a full season.”
The major leagues as a whole scored 3.38 runs per game in 1908, with a few teams under 3.0 (including the Cardinals and soon-to-be-called Yankees).
The Cubs have definitely seen both extremes of overreactions in terms of fan sentiment. The second ten game win streak especially had a whole bunch of comebacks and nailbiters and games where every late break went their way, while the ten game losing streak had the exact opposite.
I never thought they were as good as the Dodgers or Braves, but I also think they’re much better than fans think they are right now. Before the season, I thought they were ~4-5 wins better than the Brewers, and they’re 5.5 back now. The Brewers are definitely favorites, but I would buy Cubs stock at 12.6% division odds. Really though, I think the Pirates are the team whose division odds are way too high in the projections.
Right now, the Pirates do have the tiebreaker (with 6 left to play, up 1). If things stay as even as expected, that becomes a huge differentiator (ask Yankee fans — we got burned by that last year). The “default” playoff odds mode has the Brewers, Pirates and Cubs as roughly even ROS — .520 for the Brewers, .519 for the Pirates, .511 for the Cubs.
It definitely seems like the Brewers are a notch better than the rest, the Pirates and Cubs are more-or-less even, and the Cardinals/Reds are a step below those two. Are there outcomes where the Cubbies catch fire again and seize the division? Sure. Are they a better team than the recent sample? Yep. Do I think (given current rosters/injuries, etc.) that the Cubs are 5.5 games better than the Brewers ROS? Highly unlikely — 12.6% feels high.
And we know that the projection systems consistently underrate the Brewers.
The projection systems obviously don’t account for this, but I might put the Cubs slightly higher just because I think the Cubs are the most likely of those teams to make splashy impact trades, particularly for pitching. They have the pieces to do it, as guys like Matt Shaw and Pedro Ramirez are blocked for the foreseeable future but would be of interest to teams looking to sell.
That’s fair, and everyone adjusts the mental model in ways that makes sense to them. That’s just my read based on what we know on June 2nd.
I think a 12-20% shot of winning the division feels right for both the Pirates and the Cubs. I think in general we are underrating the Cubs and the Pirates because they were play in what is unexpectedly the most competitive division in baseball, and I think they have to be considered two of the favorites (along with the Phillies) to grab a wild card spot.
The Cubs have been a pretty good team this decade but it is a little embarrassing that they are in a market that is like 8 times the size of Milwaukee and they have finished one spot behind them basically every year.
Reminds me of that song “My head hurts, my feet stink, and I don’t love Jesus”
The Cubs looked great through ~40 games again, it was unsustainable again, they fell off again, they gave the Brewers free real estate again. The fall off could have been quick and sudden or gradual, and nothing is guaranteed in baseball, but I’m 0% surprised it has come.
This article provides cool granular insight on this specific year, but we’ve seen this play out multiple times before. The Cubs have been starting disproportionately hot and failing to sustain it for most of the past 10 years, and I feel like there’s some additional big-picture causes beyond the specifics of this year.
I believe that Szymborski summed it up well in explaining why the Brewers are under projected by ZIPS on a consistent basis. They don’t have a lineup of highly paid players, so they can easily flex to play the players that are playing the best. The Cubs lineup is basically locked in stone, with the contracts given to Happ, Suzuki, Bregman, and especially Swanson. While they may be good players, all are being played like well above average to exceptional players. This limits the options that Counsell has to deploy.
I enjoyed his article, but I’m more talking about the Cubs here.
Many other teams have highly paid players and, unlike the Cubs, don’t repeatedly start hot before cooling down.
Honestly, this team might be better off just selling off whatever they can at the deadline and reloading for ’27 (or whenever we have baseball again.) They need two SP, bullpen help and an impact bat, none of which will be cheap. Or maybe they could sell and buy strategically for a bit of a “soft rebuild.” In any case, trading for rentals seems like a fool’s errand…
What would that even look like? Who is available in trades that could help in ‘27 but not in ‘26? Who can the cubs sell high on right now?
Looking at the BR page, they have 9 positional players with at least 1.0 WAR, which seems like the profile of a contender. But outside of Ben Brown, and all other SPs are 0.0 WAR or lower. While their 2025 pitching was decent, it was a group that is all below 100 stuff+, and most were closer to 90 stuff+ than 100. So maybe this was predictable, going from 4th (2025) to 10th (2026) in NL ERA.
They weren’t that good before and they aren’t that bad now. They still have a deep group of position players, probably top 5 in MLB, and eventually some of their starters are going to get healthy.
The end result might not result in a division championship or pennant because the NL is loaded this year. And that would be disappointing since it is maybe Happ and Suzuki’s last year with the Cubs and because of the (panicky) deal for Bregman. But I am way less worried about the Cubs than I would be about the D-Backs, Padres, or Phillies.
It will be hard for the Cubs to ever make a good trade if they are in win mode every single year.
Would be a great year to ship off some veterans and load the minors back up if the slide continues.
As for the pitching, it’s tough watching the A’s throw out a guy named “Jump” that is pumping 98 as a lefty with his fastball. The Pirates have multiple starters that can throw close to 100.
I think the Cubs primary problem is a lack of velo in the rotation and bullpen.
Which leads back to shipping off some veterans this year…..
FA is very weak coming up.
Suzuki looks cooked. The big questions:
Would I be a fool to drop him? I added Bleday and have him next to Cruz / Arozarena, so Suzuki is feeling expendable, but I can’t seem to pull the trigger after what he did in 2025. Thoughts anyone?
Yes, it’s June 4th. Yes, the Cubs are over .500 and only 1 GB of the Wild Card. And yet…
Suzuki, Happ, Imanaga, and Taillon are all impending free agents. The farm system is seriously depleted. Hoerner, Swanson, and Bregman are all on big money, long-term contracts that likely won’t age well. This is a team that could be on the precipice of a disastrous turn.
I really only see a few attractive assets the Cubs have to offer to other teams: PCA, Busch, Horton, Ballesteros, and Cabrera. But in the case of Busch and Cabrera, the Cubs probably won’t sell after giving up quality prospects for those guys. PCA just signed a new contract, they’d be selling low on Horton. Only Ballesteros has real value and he’s pretty much a DH only.
When you compare the roster and the short-term outlook of the Cubs compared to the rest of the NL Central (especially the Brewers and Pirates), it’s hard to feel very confident. They will either need to spend big very soon or pivot to rebuild and go all-in in that direction.