In the biggest moments this season, the Cubs have failed spectacularly.
Their loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday afternoon is a perfect encapsulation of what’s ailed them all season. Trailing by one run, the Cubs had runners on the corners with one out in the eighth and the bases loaded with one down in the ninth. They failed to score in both scenarios and lost by a run, dropping them to 4-11 in one-run games on the season.
Advertisement
“As a team, the story of our season so far is we struggled in high-leverage situations both offensively and pitching-wise,” team president Jed Hoyer said. “We struggled to execute in those situations. That’s the reason that our record isn’t flipped or even better. We just have to do better as a team in those situations, and I think we will.”
The issues on the pitching side aren’t hard to figure out. The Cubs relievers are often pitching in close games and they just haven’t been good enough. With a 4.60 ERA, the bullpen is the worst in the National League. Perhaps that can be fixed with Adbert Alzolay and Mark Leiter Jr. taking on bigger roles, Codi Heuer’s imminent return and some other youngsters like Daniel Palencia coming in to aid the group.
But the bats? The same players who are performing well overall are struggling when it matters most. In what FanGraphs defines as low- and medium-leverage situations, the Cubs’ offense is sixth in baseball with a 109 wRC+. But in the high-leverage moments, the Cubs have a 66 wRC+, last in the NL and 28th in baseball.
“It’s obviously no secret that when the game’s kind of in balance, we haven’t been good,” shortstop Dansby Swanson said. “The baseball and eye test will tell you that. At the same point, the perspective is that we’re more than capable. You would think the law of averages would start to take place and we’ll be able to come through in those moments and get things going in the direction that we all see this club being able to achieve.”
There is a debate that exists mostly between the data-oriented and old-school baseball heads about the existence of “clutch.” Of course, what happened is real. Players either performed in the clutch or they didn’t. That’s not up for debate. But are there good players who suddenly shrink when the lights get brightest? Are there players who don’t hit well overall but suddenly manage to perform in critical situations? That’s where the disagreement lies.
Advertisement
“I do think clutch is a real thing in sports,” Nico Hoerner said. “I’m not of the belief that this is all just some random simulation with a bunch of people who you can wrap up in numbers and there’s no emotion to it. I don’t believe that at all. I like to think that when I’m in a big situation, I’ll be able to make it happen. And when I don’t, nothing changes the next time I’m in it.”
As Joe Maddon liked to say, the heartbeat matters. Where some people disagree with Hoerner is that this is very rare. Most players who can’t handle the biggest moments are culled from the group before ever reaching the big leagues. Sure, there are outliers on either side, but for the most part, there is a belief that you are who you usually are. Just because there is something extreme happening for a short period of time, doesn’t mean that’s predictive of what will happen in the future.
“When it’s 20 or 30 at-bats, looking at batting average in those situations isn’t really always the best test,” Hoerner said. “But when it is something as big as our group over a two-month span, maybe there’s something within that.”
The Cubs are aware of these issues. The solution isn’t clear though. There are certainly players who are overthinking things as these issues mount and are putting more pressure on themselves than necessary. That’s a problem, because a player changing what they normally do is exactly what leads to these bad numbers.
“It’s more about doubling down on whatever your individual strength is,” Hoerner said. “There’s no right way as a team to go about it. The best teams in baseball, their team approach is every hitter not changing what they do best. That is the challenge of big situations: continuing to be the best version of yourself. Don’t do more or less, just stick to what you normally do.”
Advertisement
FanGraphs has a metric called Clutch. It’s essentially the Win Probability Added (WPA) a player or team has accumulated in those big moments. For individual players, +2 is viewed as excellent and -2 as awful. Essentially, that would mean a player has helped a team add or subtract two wins to their total.
As a team, most groups tend to hover within three points of zero, plus or minus. A zero in this metric means the team performs the same in big moments as they do in other moments. This season, the best team in baseball (Baltimore) is at 3.42. The 29th team in baseball (Minnesota) is at -3.25. The Cubs are at -6.26. When that happens over the course of a full season, it’s pretty extreme. Over two months? It’s almost unheard of.
Even with an ever-evolving group of players, whether the offense has been overall good, bad or just in the middle, it’s been years since the Cubs were saving their best for the clutch moments. Even in 2016, they were at -3.62. But they were so regularly beating up on the opposition that it didn’t matter that they weren’t always coming through in the highest-leverage moments. Those moments were rarer, hence they had a smaller impact. And in the end, they managed to come through in October.
Swanson made it clear that this isn’t something he believes can be addressed at a team level.
“You yourself have to understand if it’s something you need to change or is it tough luck baseball,” he said. “This game is hard, so is it that or do you need to stick with it? So it’s hard to make a blanket statement of what we all need to do.”
There are some obvious players who are struggling in those moments. Seiya Suzuki has a -0.76 Clutch (though overall he has a 125 wRC+ with runners in scoring position). Miles Mastrobuoni is at -0.46. But Christopher Morel (-0.71) is also struggling and Cody Bellinger (-0.74) is second-worst on the team to Patrick Wisdom (-0.85). Shockingly, Nick Madrigal leads the team at 0.24, which probably is more indicative of the fact that he’s had a few big hits while also generally not hitting for much of the season.
Looking at the veterans on the team who have experienced a lot of winning, this number seems to fluctuate from year to year. Suzuki was basically even in those moments last year. Wisdom, who is prone to strikeouts, led the team by a wide margin last season.
Advertisement
That all suggests this is less a skill and more a bit of randomness in a small sample. When these types of seasons — or at least two-month stretches — seemingly come for every player in the lineup at once is when a team ends up with the kind of run the Cubs are on.
So far this season, the Cubs don’t have a single position player who is regularly in the lineup and on the positive end of this statistic. But that can shift quickly. Ian Happ started Wednesday on the positive end (0.11), but his critical strikeout that afternoon pushed him to -0.01. Only five players (Happ, Mike Tauchman, Yan Gomes, Edwin Ríos and Trey Mancini) currently on the roster have a wRC+ above 100 in high-leverage moments. But that’s also a combined 66 plate appearances for those players, hardly enough of a sample size to draw any conclusions.
Which is why it’s really hard to say this is how it’s going to be all season long. Are players like Swanson, Hoerner and Bellinger really going to struggle in big moments all year? As volatile as this particular statistic is, history shows these are good players who generally hit in any situation.
There is an extreme scenario where this trend lasts. It’s happened before to various teams over the years on both ends of the scale. And as a team that always knew this season would be decided in the margins, poor performance in these moments particularly stings this group.
But it is more likely that this goes one of two ways: The Cubs just stop hitting at an above-league-average level in all situations and the offense as a whole tumbles, or they continue to hit in general and start to perform in the big moments as well.
“I don’t think it’s predictive of what we’ll do the rest of the year,” Hoerner said. “But it’s also not something to ignore. It’s a real thing that we can take pride in (when it goes well). It’s going to be that much more satisfying when it does (turn).”
(Top photo of Nico Hoerner: David Banks / USA Today)
