SAN FRANCISCO — When third baseman Alex Bregman was presented Thursday with the fact that it had been awhile — since late April, to be precise — since the Cubs had hit three home runs in a game, he had a different milestone in mind.
‘‘Or [since we] played good,’’ he deadpanned.
Certainly, the Cubs’ big free-agent addition hasn’t been shy about sharing his feelings on his and the team’s performance during an 8-22 stretch. He talked last weekend about how he has been “terrible.”
And in the wake of a victory Thursday against the Rockies, he wasn’t exactly giddy about a long-awaited power display that prevented a sweep.
‘‘We need to be more consistent,’’ Bregman said. ‘‘A lot of guys are working on different things. Hopefully, work starts paying off. We have maybe three guys playing to their potential. So we’ve got a lot of work to do, and we’ve got to be better.
‘‘We’re way better of a ballclub than we’ve shown. We’ve got to . . . figure out a way to get it done on the field. That’s my impression: We’ve got to play better.’’
Blunt. And not exactly the kind of words you hear in a clubhouse after a victory.
But Bregman has been through a lot of winning in his career. There’s no doubt that he, a two-time World Series champion, knows what it takes to reach the mountaintop. That seems to be the only standard he’s interested in upholding, something that has stood out to his teammates.
‘‘He’s constantly working,’’ catcher Carson Kelly told the Sun-Times on Friday, ‘‘constantly working on how he can make things a little bit better mechanically, how he can make an adjustment at the plate mentally. He’s always trying to be better.
‘‘It leaves trails. A lot of successful guys in this game leave trails. And one of those is always — to every single guy — the work ethic. There’s always guys that go out there and work. The guys that have had success over a long career, like he has? You can’t do that just showing up, right? There’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes, and he’s dedicated to his craft.’’
So is the work paying off?
Bregman’s recent roller-coaster ride continued during the three-game series against the Rockies in Denver. After he followed up an 11-game hitting streak with a 2-for-24 homestand, he was 3-for-9 with a homer, three RBI, three runs scored and three walks.
In his blunt way, Bregman agreed there was some improvement.
‘‘This series was better,’’ he said. ‘‘I still missed too many pitches in the heart of the plate. Normally, I have a 1.000, 1.200 OPS [on pitches] in the middle of the plate. Right now, it’s not there. It’s god-awful.
‘‘Still a lot of work to be done, but it was a better series.’’
Boyd update
Left-hander Matthew Boyd’s delay in returning from the injured list might not last too long. After he worked out Friday, the Cubs sounded optimistic his return — which was supposed to come this weekend but won’t after he experienced shoulder soreness this week — might come quickly.
‘‘He had a good day today,’’ manager Craig Counsell said. “The next step is to figure out when we can get him [throwing] off the mound again. I don’t have a day for that. But I think the fact that today was good means it was something minor and we can progress rapidly.’’
