A Bad and Stupid Team: the 2024 Chicago Cubs
The 2024 Chicago Cubs aren’t just bad, they’re stupid on the baseball field too. There were signs of it early in the season and you would have thought that maybe they’d clean it up and play better fundamental baseball as the season progressed. Sadly, the reality is that the Cubs haven’t changed one bit and fans are left watching an embarrassing product.
Cody Bellinger was doubled off first base to end the sixth inning, when Ian Happ hit a fly ball to center field with one out during Friday’s 4-2 loss to the Brewers. This came after a Milwaukee pitching change and it was quite embarrassing, as Bellinger simply forgot how many outs there were in the inning. Those things happen from time to time, but when your team has also been horrible for two months it’s going to get picked apart under a microscope.
The Cubs now lead MLB with 35 outs on the bases.
The Cubs are also tied with the Cleveland Guardians by being thrown out at home 15 times. However, Cleveland has the third-highest scoring team in baseball, while the Cubs are averaging 4.13 runs per game, which ranks 20th in MLB.
The impotent Cubs offense has pretty much driven the team to desperation and on one hand we have seen a lot more stolen bases, however, we’ve also seen some wild sends by third base coach Willie Harris. Can you really blame him though? Your team can’t score any runs, so you try to scratch and claw for any run when an opportunity presents itself even the decision is risky.
The Cubs are ranked 28th in runs per game since the beginning of May.
They also lead the majors in making outs on the bases at second base, which again could be a sign of trying to be overaggressive or maybe just bad base running.
Another thing that pisses me off about this team is that Miguel Amaya now leads all catchers with four catcher’s interference calls this season. His fourth violation came with two outs in the fourth inning Friday night and because we’re talking about the 2024 Cubs that mistake by Amaya, as well as Jameson Taillon botching a grounder back up the middle, led to the game-winning grand slam by the Brewers.
Bad defense, bad base running, hitters not doing much to adjust at the plate and that was on full display against Brewers starting pitcher Colin Rea in the series opener. Don’t get me wrong, Rea has had a solid season for Milwaukee, entering Friday’s game with a 3.62 ERA in 82 innings, but he’s very hittable. The righty only averaged 5.93 strikeouts per nine innings, which was third lowest among all 72 pitchers with at least 80 innings.
Well, you’d think that facing Rea for the second time in about three weeks that the Cubs would have a better game plan. Oh, how naive we are. No, instead Rea struck out a season high eight batters in 5.1 innings and only gave up three hits against the Cubs.
Awesome. The Cubs are now 38-45, and trail the Brewers by 11.5 games in the NL Central.