Everybody calm down.
The Cubs, despite looking worse than a last-place 16-inch team at Oz Park during this 2-14 free-fall heading into Wednesday night’s game in Pittsburgh, are going to be fine.
How can you not believe it if president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, on whose watch the Cubs have won one playoff series and zero division titles since 2020, says it’s so?
“Everyone in there knows we’re going to play better,” Hoyer told reporters at PNC Park before the Cubs recommenced getting their brains beaten in, “but it’s just a matter of when and how that’s going to shake out.”
For one thing, you just know the Cubs are going to get back to playing their signature brand of stellar defense. Well, they probably will. A lot of it depends on whether or not center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, their most ballyhooed slinger of leather, stops insisting on inserting “Fool’s” before “Gold Glove.”
What’s eating Pete these days, anyway? Do the Cubs need to hire a personal care assistant (PCA) to keep an eye on him? Judging by his antics and errors in the outfield lately, he’s not exactly at the top of his mental game. The wheels are still turning, as the expression goes, but the hamster died.
Ah, well, at least you know the Cubs’ pitching will only improve, and soon, in all likelihood in a big way. Maybe? Edward Cabrera should be back soon, although, come to think of it, he averaged three earned runs allowed in about five innings pitched in his last eight starts before a blister sidetracked him, and that really isn’t anything special. Matthew Boyd and his 6.00 ERA — surely misleading — shouldn’t be far behind Cabrera. Remember Justin Steele? If and when he comes back, one can only assume he’ll be as good as new if not better than ever. Right?
Of course Shota Imanaga will simply flip a switch and stop leaving meatballs in the zone. Of course veteran reliever Phil Maton will have a eureka moment and rediscover the art of — what’s it called again? — pitching. Of course Hoyer will make all the right moves to bolster the rotation and ’pen as needed, because when has he ever not come through before? (Did we already mention the playoff series win?)
As far as hitting, which has been the weakness of weaknesses for the Cubs since their 8-0 start to the month of May, let’s address it with a question: Are you familiar with the term “back of the baseball card”?
What it implies, essentially, is that the proven track records of the veterans in the Cubs’ lineup — particularly the ones making huge chunks of a $250 payroll — should allow worried fans to relax because, really, these season statistics practically write themselves.
No one should doubt the coming onslaught from the bat of $35 million-a-year third baseman Alex Bregman, for example. Yes, he so far is driving the ball with the authority of your Aunt Dotty, but just look at the back of the man’s card! In fact, one of us is doing it right now and seeing — hang on, really? — one All-Star appearance for Bregman and nothing higher than 19th in MVP voting since 2019. Again, really?
But there’s no reason shortstop Dansby Swanson, in year four of his $177 million deal, won’t get hotter than Georgia asphalt with the stick just because he has a lower batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, not to mention a higher strikeout rate, as a Cub than he had as a Brave.
And then there’s left fielder Ian Happ, the longest-tenured Cub, who came into Wednesday a mere 10 hits shy of 1,000 for his career, suggesting he has an excellent chance to reach the milestone by September. Happ did have an RBI double Tuesday in a 12-1 loss — the team’s 10th in a row — but then got gunned out at third on a highly questionable tag-up. In fairness to him, the whole thing had to be a bit confusing given how rarely he’d been on base with a hit lately.
The point being, again — everybody calm down.
OK, fine, so the Cubs have gone from first place to last place so fast, it’s almost like they’re the Pirates. Or the Cardinals. Or the Reds. Anyone else, really, aside from the Brewers.
But how afraid is anyone supposed to be of these first-place Brewers, anyway? What, just because they’ve made the National League Central their bully’s playground, smacking around the Cubs and all others with wanton abandon for most of this decade — most notably since Pat Murphy took over as manager — are we really expected to sit here and believe it might go down like that again in 2026?
Oh, please.
The highest-paid skipper in the game, meanwhile — the Cubs’ Craig Counsell, the pride of the Hoyer regime — just might be struggling a tiny bit himself. Counsell has gone from, roughly, “We’ll be fine” to, “It’s time to turn it up a notch” to, “For the love of God, will someone, anyone, grab a bat and at least appear to have a vague clue as to its general purpose?”
But fear not, because if anyone can save the day, it’s the guy with a .538 winning percentage as Cubs skipper, which is even better than the .531 he had in Milwaukee, where he led the Brewers to the postseason five times without getting to a World Series.
So, everybody just take a few deep breaths.
After all, what could go wrong?
