The Cubs Have Turned Things Around

Three weeks ago, things weren’t looking great for the Cubs. True, the season hadn’t hit the two-week mark at that point, but the NL Central favorites had started 4-6 and were running last in the division. Two members of their starting rotation, Matthew Boyd and Cade Horton, had just landed on the injured list, and right fielder Seiya Suzuki had yet to play after straining a ligament in his right knee during the World Baseball Classic. Soon, the injury bug would bite their bullpen, as well, but just as it did, the team reeled off a 10-game winning streak, the majors’ longest this season. While that ended on Saturday at the hands of the Dodgers, followed by another loss on Sunday, the Cubs do appear to be back on track. With a 17-11 record, they’re one game behind the Reds for the division lead.

Their streak began on April 14, a day after the Phillies pounded them 13-7 at Citizens Bank Park. To that point, the Cubs were 7-9, having won three-game series against the Angels and Rays but lost three-game series to the Nationals, Guardians, and Pirates. But Chicago turned the tables on the Phillies by dropping double-digit run totals on back-to-back days, winning 10-4 and 11-2, before returning home to kick off a sweep of the Mets with a 12-4 victory. The Cubs then capped that sweep two days later with Nico Hoerner’s 10th-inning walk-off sacrifice fly, then circled back to take four straight from the Phillies, including another 10th-inning walk-off, this time on a Dansby Swanson single on April 23. Their winning streak reached 10 games with a 6-4 victory over the Dodgers in Los Angeles on Friday. It was Chicago’s longest since 2016, when the club won 11 straight from July 31 to August 12.

It certainly didn’t hurt that the Cubs’ schedule coincided with both the Mets and Phillies playing particularly bad baseball. New York lost 12 in a row from April 8-21 and Philadelphia 10 in a row from April 14–24; both finished the weekend 9-19. The Cubs own the NL’s highest winning percentage against sub-.500 teams (.750, a 12-4 record), though they’re just 5-7 against those .500 or better after their two losses in Los Angeles this weekend.

So how good is this team, really? Pretty good by most measures. Chicago’s .607 winning percentage ranks sixth in the majors, while its +31 run differential, .610 Pythagorean-projected winning percentage, and .652 Base Runs-projected winning percentage all rank fourth. The Cubs have scored in the double digits four times, more than any other team besides the Dodgers, and are 7-4 in games decided by five or more runs. On the other side of the coin, they’ve been held to two or fewer runs six times, tied with four other teams for the second-lowest total, and are the only one of those teams to win more than one such game. (They’ve won two of them). They are 4-2 in one-run games.

The biggest driver of the team’s success so far has been its offense. The Cubs rank fourth in the NL with 5.32 runs per game, behind the Braves, Dodgers, and Nationals. They are among the league’s top three in all three components of their .263/.354/.427 slash line, alongside the Braves and Dodgers, while their 122 wRC+ is second only to that of Los Angeles. They’ve done this despite their top hitter from last year, Michael Busch, batting a feeble .214/.299/.311 (77 wRC+), and their second-best hitter, Kyle Tucker, departing for the Dodgers; speaking of Tucker, he’s started slowly, but he doubled and scored during Sunday’s three-run first-inning rally against Shota Imanaga.

Aside from Busch and Pete Crow-Armstrong, though, every hitter who’s taken at least 10 plate appearances for the Cubs this season has a wRC+ of 100 or better. Hoerner has been the top full-timer (.307/.382/.474, 142 wRC+) while showing uncharacteristic power; his four homers are nearly halfway to his career high of 10. As Jake Mailhot highlighted last week, Hoerner’s swing decisions have improved, and he’s pulling the ball in the air with greater frequency than ever (21.4%, up from 17.5% last year and his 14.5% career rate). While he’s also 7-for-7 in steals, I wouldn’t hold my breath for a 30-homer, 30-steal season. Meanwhile, Ian Happ has hit a team-high seven homers while batting .235/.350/.480 (133 wRC+). He is currently riding an 18-game on-base streak.

Of the other hitters with a 120 wRC+ or higher, five of them have played much less than a full complement of games, making manager Craig Counsell look particularly astute when it comes to mixing and matching. Suzuki didn’t make his season debut until April 10, but he’s seemingly none the worse for wear, hitting a robust .305/.414/.525 (165 wRC+) with four home runs in 16 games. With Matt Shaw and Michael Conforto — now there’s an unlikely pairing, last year’s regular third baseman and an outfielder who absolutely flatlined with the Dodgers — filling in during his absence and occasional turns at designated hitter, Cubs right fielders have hit a combined .295/.389/.537 (157 wRC+) with six homers. Shaw, who was knocked off third base with the signing of Alex Bregman, is thriving in a superutility role, making 11 starts in right, two at third, and one apiece at first, second, and center. He’s hit .286/.333/.460 (122 wRC+) while slowing down his swing, squaring the ball up more frequently, and substantially improving his average exit velocity (from 84.9 mph to 88.1) and expected slugging percentage (from .375 to .430) following a disappointing rookie season.

Led by Moisés Ballesteros, the team’s designated hitters have hit .330/.406/.557 (171 wRC+) with five homers. Ballesteros has caught just one game, but he and fellow catchers Carson Kelly and Miguel Amaya have combined to hit .280/.358/.411 (121 wRC+). Among the other full-timers, Swanson has offset a .190 BABIP with six home runs and a 16.2% walk rate en route to a .191/.325/.415 (109 wRC+). Bregman has hit a modest .252/.336/.374 (102 wRC+), but he’s been trending upwards lately, with a 133 wRC+ since the start of the winning streak.

Which leaves Crow-Armstrong, who’s hitting .238/.298/.314 (74 wRC+) in an extension of the slump he’s been in since around last year’s All-Star break. He’s struck out 29.6% of the time, up from 24.0% last year, and it’s not hard to see why. He’s swinging hard more frequently (40.6% fast-swing rate, up from 28.5%) but less effectively, with his barrel rate plummeting from 13.0% to 5.6% and his squared-up rate from 22.1% to 18.8%. He’s chasing a ghastly 44.6% of pitches outside the zone (up over three percentage points from last year), and his swing rates on waste pitches — pitches against which the entire league is hitting .012 and slugging .018 — has almost doubled relative to last year, from 10.5% to 19.1%. He remains an elite defender, already with 7 FRV and 8 DRS, though on Saturday he misplayed a warning-track fly ball by Alex Freeland into a double, offsetting some of the more impressive plays he made over the weekend:

PCA also went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts in that game while Dodgers fans read the Los Angeles native the riot act regarding his preseason trash-talking. Not his best day.

With so many other hitters swinging the bat well, Crow-Armstrong’s lack of offense hasn’t really cost the Cubs, but the 24-year-old fly chaser owns a .223/.274/.353 in 361 plate appearances since the start of the second half last year; his 73 wRC+ in that span is the majors’ third-lowest mark among players with at least 300 plate appearances. Given that he’s now signed for the next six years, it’s time to for the Cubs to help him clean up his approach at the plate.

Before we depart this brisk tour of the Chicago offense, it’s worth noting that its Statcast numbers suggest some regression ahead. Cubs hitters have the largest gaps between their actual and expected batting average (16 points above their .247 xBA) and wOBA (19 points above their .330 xwOBA), and the second-largest gap between their actual and expected slugging percentage (20 points above their .407 xSLG).

On the pitching side, the Cubs are eighth in the NL in run prevention (4.21 per game), and a good chunk of the credit belongs to their defense, which leads the majors in FRV (13) and is tied for third in DRS (16). They’ve weathered some substantial losses in both their rotation and bullpen, with uneven results so far; the starters rank sixth in the NL in both ERA and FIP (each 3.98), while the relievers are eighth in the former (3.76) and 11th in the latter (4.34).

The biggest loss is that of the 24-year-old Horton, who was the runner-up to Drake Baldwin in last year’s NL Rookie of the Year voting. He made just two starts before landing on the injured list due to a forearm strain on April 4; a follow-up visit to Dr. Keith Meister led to April 16 Tommy John surgery. He’s been replaced in the rotation by Colin Rea, whom the Dodgers lit up for six runs in 3 1/3 innings on Saturday. Boyd, projected to be the staff ace based on innings and WAR, landed on the IL on April 5 with a biceps strain, but fortunately, that proved to be a comparatively minor issue; he returned to the rotation last Wednesday and allowed two runs in 4 2/3 innings against the Phillies. Though his ERA is a beefy 5.79, his FIP is a microscopic 1.56; he’s struck out 22 (an eye-opening 39.3%) while walking just three in his 14 innings. His swinging strike rate has spiked from 10.7% to 18.4%, thanks largely to substantially more chases on both his four-seam fastball and changeup, a development that bears watching to see if it sticks.

Imanaga was knocked around for five runs in five innings by the Dodgers on Sunday, but overall he’s pitched well, posting a 3.15 ERA and 2.84 FIP. His eight-point jump in strikeout rate over last year (from 20.8% to 28.8%) is tied to his getting higher whiff rates on both his splitter and sweeper. Newcomer Edward Cabrera has strong run-prevention numbers (2.73 ERA, 3.86 FIP), but his average fastball velocity is down (from 97.0 mph to 95.7), as is his strikeout rate (from 25.8% to 18.5%), which may rate as a concern. Jameson Taillon has served up 2.28 homers per nine en route to a 4.55 ERA and 6.02 FIP. Javier Assad didn’t pitch any better while filling in for Boyd; including some rough work in the bullpen, he’s got a 7.58 ERA and 4.97 FIP in 19 innings.

The bullpen has been hit with such an absurd amount of injuries that, on Saturday, the team unearthed Vince Velasquez for his first major league relief appearance since May 27, 2023; he was DFA’d after providing 2 1/3 innings of scoreless relief. Eight Cubs relievers, including their top four in terms of projected WAR, are currently on the IL. Excluding Shelby Miller and Porter Hodge, both of whom are out for the year due to UCL repairs (full Tommy John surgery last fall for the former, April 20 UCL brace surgery for the latter), here are the rest of the pitchers on the shelf:

Thielbar and Martin have the team’s only saves since Palencia went down, so the matter of who’s closing is more theoretical than anything else. RosterResource currently lists Ben Brown, Hoby Milner, and Jacob Webb as co-closers, with Brown the most heavily used and successful of the bunch to date (19 innings, 2.37 ERA, 2.66 FIP). He and Milner (13 1/3 innings, 2.70 ERA, 5.98 FIP) both have one career save, while Webb (9 2/3 innings, 4.66 ERA, 5.40 FIP) has seven spread across four different teams. Maton rejoined the team in Los Angeles and could be back as soon as Monday, while Roberts is on a rehab assignment. Palencia’s prognosis could become more clear after a workout on Tuesday, but he and Thielbar won’t be back until sometime in May, and likewise for Harvey, who’s resumed a throwing program.

All of which is to say that the later innings could be rocky ones for the Cubs for awhile. They’ll need that offense to keep pummeling opponents, but despite their bumps and bruises to date, for the most part they seem to be back on track.