Can Cubs get hot before they trade away their stars? |
After a hot start to the season, the Chicago Cubs have played terrible baseball the last two months. Since May began, the Cubs have played 13 games under .500, leaving them in last place as the calendar flips to July.
Similar to last season, the Cubs entered July with work to do to avoid a sell-off at the trade deadline. In 2023, The Cubs were 19 games over .500 from August and put themselves in a position to buy at the trade deadline and make the playoffs. We all remember the collapse in September that followed, but the second-half hot streak was enough to keep the band together. In fact, instead of making substantial additions or changes to the 2023 roster, Jed Hoyer made a few cost-effective signings, and the only splash that was made was hiring Craig Counsell for the league’s largest managerial contract ever. Surprisingly, and unsurprisingly, to some, the Cubs have not looked like the team we saw in the second half of last year. Instead, the Cubs find themselves 11 games out of first place in the NL Central despite having the highest payroll and five games out of the third National League Wild Card spot. So, the Cubs have some work to do as July begins. Last year, Cody Bellinger sparked the hot streak as he emerged again as one of baseball’s best hitters. The Cubs found consistency in the back of the bullpen, with Mark Leiter Jr., Julian Merryweather, and Adbert Alzolay cementing himself as the closer. Timely hitting from players like Christopher Morel, Seiya Suzuki, Ian Happ, Nico Hoerner, and Dansby Swanson certainly helped, plus a Cy Young-caliber campaign from Justin Steele. It was easy to watch how the Cubs played in July and August and believe they were primed for a big year to build on in 2024. A 17-10 record posted in April amongst injuries this season seemed to support that logic. Instead, a skid turned into a slump, and now the Cubs have been the worst team in the NL for the last two months. So naturally, as July begins, the trade rumors have emerged, and the selling side of the deadline feels like the appealing one — and once again, the Cubs’ only way to escape it is by going on a hot streak. There are two ways to look at this. On one side of things, you could argue that last year’s hot streak has set this team back. The two months of solid baseball in 2023 fooled the front office into believing this team was better than it was — meaning the Cubs missed out on some of the assets it could have required at last season’s deadline. Some more aggressive offseason moves to address holes you didn’t think you had at the time. With this line of thinking, you would blame Jed Hoyer for being fooled by last season’s hot streak and not improving this team more over the offseason. Essentially, you believe this team isn’t good enough to win — and wonder how management didn’t see that or put more weight into how this team looked in the first half of last season. The other side of this coin is a belief that the Cubs are bound to break through at some point. This team can go on a heater — they did it last year. They’ve had some bad luck this year. The Cubs have blown almost 20 games this year, they’ve been uncharacteristically bad on defense and have ran into the most outs on the bases in the majors — plus, many of their hitters have had some severe struggles. If you believe in statistics in the slightest, some type of regression toward the norm as to be coming — and if it comes at the same time? Winning streak. We’ve seen Suzuki, Morel, Happ, Bellinger, Swanson, and Hoerner all have hot streaks; who’s to say they can’t do it again? The correct answer likely lies in the middle. You can’t fault the organization for going for it last season when the team certainly looked capable of making a run, but you CAN fault them for not doing more to improve the team for 2024. But, at the same time, you can’t have a ton of confidence in this team’s ability to contend when they have looked so bad for more than half the season. They are undoubtedly flawed, but we know they aren’t THIS bad — we’ve SEEN better. Can we see better before they gut the team by the deadline?
