CHICAGO — On a humid night with the wind blowing out at Wrigley Field, the last-place Cubs scored enough runs to win but not enough not to lose.
Bad teams find ways to misplace victories and few are better at that than the 2024 Cubs.
What can you say about Monday night’s 7-6 gut punch of a loss to the San Francisco Giants other than “Oh my” or “Dear lord” or “When does Bears camp start again?” Well, I’m sure you can find a few expletives, but this is a family publication.
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A three-run cushion was delivered to the Cubs’ magic club of a bullpen, whose greatest trick seems to be making leads disappear. Hector Néris, take a bow. But please, put down that saw and don’t pull that rabbit by its ears.
It’s simply an unpleasant situation to have a team that has played the most one-run games in baseball (30) mixed with a bullpen that has blown the second-most saves (16). But that’s the reality for the Cubs (34-39), who have careened to the bottom of the NL Central.
You trust a lead with the Cubs bullpen like you trust a 13-year-old to drive your car, but going into the ninth with a 6-4 lead and some resurgent vibes, I still expected the Cubs to come out with a win, even if they had to white-knuckle it with “Heart Attack Hector” on the mound. The Cubs were 26-3 entering the ninth with a lead. That’s past tense.
Before the game, we were harping on the team’s offensive woes instead of their bullpen woes — you gotta mix it up in a long season — but the Cubs got that late offense they’ve often been lacking. Michael Busch hit a two-run homer in the sixth, Seiya Suzuki hit an RBI double in the seventh and then scored on Ian Happ’s three-home bomb. Wrigley Field was rocking as the Cubs led 6-3.
“We’ve all come to the ballpark many days thinking today’s the day we’ll finally break out and get things rolling,” Cubs president Jed Hoyer said before the game. “And it hasn’t happened yet and it needs to happen.”
It happened but then the Cubs bullpen happened too.
Giants catcher Patrick Bailey hit a solo homer off Mark Leiter Jr. in the eighth and then Thairo Estrada hit a three-run homer off Néris in the ninth to stun a packed crowd at Wrigley. It was Néris’ fourth blown save of the season but probably not his last.
Asked about moving Neris out of save spots, Counsell doesn't anticipate doing that: "We've got to find guys to get outs & Héctor's been a guy that's been reliable for us …Always gonna examine every best way to get 27 outs every day & we're gonna need Héctor to be part of that."
— Meghan Montemurro (@M_Montemurro) June 18, 2024
It’s mid-June and every time Hoyer has talked for the last month, he gets asked about the trade deadline, which, in this situation, is a sign he has a club that should be winning but needs a lot of help. Pretty soon, we’re going to start changing the questions to “Should you sell?” The third wild-card spot is a carrot for a team like the Cubs that deserves the stick.
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This was a roster built to win the NL Central, not the National League, and now the Cubs find themselves 8 1/2 games back of the Brewers. It’s not hard to see how this happened. They haven’t won a three-game series since taking two of three from the Pirates on May 10-12. Since then, they’ve lost at least one series to every other team in their division, going 5-15 in the process.
They dropped three of four to those same Pirates (May 16-19), two to the Cardinals (May 25-26, with one game postponed), three of four to Milwaukee (May 27-30), two of three to the Reds (May 31-June 2), three of four to the Reds (June 6-9) and two of three to the Cardinals (June 14-16). That’s how you fall to 9-17 in a division expected to be one of the worst in baseball.
Their only series victory in that span is when they swept the White Sox in a two-game set at Wrigley and they had to eke out a pair of 7-6 wins against the only bullpen less trustworthy than their own. Maybe that’s a new factoid we can add to our “How historically bad are the White Sox?” file.
Monday’s loss to San Francisco was the Cubs’ 14th series-opening defeat this season (compared to 10 wins), and it was also their ninth in their last 11 series. As freaky as it was, this is a team getting what it deserves.
“I mean, at some point you are what your numbers say you are,” Hoyer said.
As it stands, the Cubs have a solid rotation, a high-paid manager and a nice ballpark. Everything else is kind of a mess. That doesn’t mean the Cubs can’t get hot at the plate and with some injured relievers working to get back, the bullpen could very well right itself.
So while it’s not like the Cubs are 20 games under with no hope, it’s also not early anymore. This is starting to feel like a season that was lost before summer even began.
(Photo of Thairo Estrada shouting while running the bases past Cody Bellinger in the ninth: Jamie Sabau / Getty Images)
Jon Greenberg is a columnist for The Athletic based in Chicago. He was also the founding editor of The Athletic. Before that, he was a columnist for ESPN and the executive editor of Team Marketing Report. Follow Jon on Twitter @jon_greenberg
