When Anthony Rizzo was introduced to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and shown on the Wrigley Field video board, Saturday’s season-high crowd of 40,017 erupted. Rizzo was joined by two cancer patients as part of the team’s Cubs for a Cure fundraiser, giving people something to cheer about.
Then the seventh-inning stretch ended and the Cubs fans had to watch the offense try to hit again. Predictably, Rizzo’s performance was it for any sustained excitement.
There was, however, some scattered but noticeable booing the rest of the day.
The Cubs only had three hits and lost 3-0 to the Astros, dropping their seventh straight game. Manager Craig Counsell shook up the Cubs lineup, sitting struggling left fielder Ian Happ in favor of Michael Conforto, promoting center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong to leadoff and slotting second baseman Nico Hoerner in the fourth spot.
None of it worked. The Cubs offense stayed dormant.
“This is the job. Hitting is hard,” Counsell said. “For everybody, it’s not your first slump. You stick to things that have gotten you out of them, you stick to things that have made you good. You keep trying to reinforce that. The challenge is to stay with that stuff when you’re not getting results.”
One issue the Cubs have fought recently is struggling with runners in scoring position. That wasn’t a factor Saturday: they had zero official at-bats in that situation. The closest the Cubs came against Houston starter Kai-Wei Teng and three relievers was the third when they had runners on first and third with two out. But Pete Crow-Armstrong was thrown out trying to steal second, ending the inning.
That inning included two of the Cubs’ hits, the first of which was Dansby Swanson’s two-out pop-up that was misplayed by Astros second baseman Braden Shewmake. If not for that miscue, it’s possible the Cubs would have flirted with being no-hit until Alex Bregman’s ninth-inning single.
No, this is not what Counsell had in mind when he changed the batting order to give his hitters a “different look” when they were taking at-bats. The most noticeable alteration was Happ, the Cubs’ unofficial captain who’s 1 for his last 15 and has struck out 34 times in May.
“This is the great thing and the crushing thing about our game, is all the guys know they’re going to go through this,” Counsell said, recalling his conversation with Happ. “When you’re going through it, it just hurts and you don’t understand how you got there, you don’t understand how you can get out of it. It feels worse than it is.”
That’s probably true, but things don’t feel too pleasant for the Cubs.
The same team that has multiple 10-game winning streaks is stuck in a slump where it’s scored two runs or fewer nine times over the last 13 games. They’ve fallen behind the Brewers again, despite having one of the biggest payrolls in the sport, and there’s some noticeable restlessness from observers and paying customers.
Yes, the season is long, but the Cubs are going through a lull in a season that’s already felt like a roller-coaster.
“This team’s too good to let this go on very much longer,” Crow-Armstrong said. “We just show up, do the work and stuff’s bound to turn around.”
Counsell agreed. As difficult as the last two weeks have been for the Cubs, it’s just two weeks.
Albeit, two painful weeks.
“We’re going to come out of this. It’s going to be fine,” Counsell said. “We’re a good baseball team. It’s all going to happen, but while you go through it you’ve got to sit in some discomfort with it. That doesn’t feel good.”