DENVER – Perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that Colin Rea gave up two long balls in the homer-happy environs of Coors Field on Tuesday. Or that Jacob Webb was a victim of the round-tripper a night later.
These Cubs hurlers have only spent a couple days a mile above sea level. They still woke up Wednesday with more home runs allowed than any team in baseball.
Obviously, the thin Denver air isn’t to blame.
“It’s no different than pitching in Wrigley with the wind blowing out,” manager Craig Counsell said before Wednesday’s game, a 3-2 walk-off loss that dropped the Cubs to .500, at 34-34. “It’s kind of the same environment.”
Well, that seems like an issue, with 47 more home games left on the schedule, though where the Cubs play their games right now doesn’t seem to matter as much as how they’re playing.
With another series loss guaranteed in Colorado, the Cubs haven’t won a series in their last 10 tries.
By the time the Cubs went to bed Wednesday, they had surrendered 99 dingers to opposing hitters, a worrisome fact for a team dealing with issues on numerous fronts.
While an often punchless offense has defined a multi-week stretch that’s seen the Cubs lose 22 of 29 games, the pitching hasn’t been much better, coming into Wednesday with a 5.17 ERA since May 9, the day after completing their second 10-game win streak of the year.
Only the Rockies, coincidentally, had a worse team ERA during that span.
Any explanation for this inability to keep guys in the ballpark?
“We throw a lot of strikes. That’s the big thing,” pitching coach Tommy Hottovy told the Sun-Times on Wednesday. “When you throw strikes in positive counts, a lot of times that works in your favor. It’s when you fall behind or get in bad counts, that’s when you tend to pay.
“I do think some of them are bad pitch selection. I think some of it is just not executing pitches. And I do think some of it, at times, is batted-ball stuff that won’t sustain over the course of a full season.”
Here’s another gruesome stat: The Cubs came into Wednesday having allowed the most first-pitch homers in baseball, with 20. After another Wednesday night, that total is old enough to drink.
“We’ve given up more 0-0 homers than we’ve given up in the past,” Hottovy said. “Teams know we throw strikes, … so teams are more aggressive off us. We have to counter that. We have to be willing to take bigger shots earlier in the count.
“Ultimately, it comes back to executing pitches.”
Bettering the bats
As if solving pitching problems wasn’t enough, the Cubs need to simultaneously figure out how to fix their struggling offense.
They mustered just two runs on five hits Wednesday.
“Offense is contagious in both ways,” outfielder Ian Happ said after the game. “You guys have seen this offense rolling, scoring eight to 10 runs a game for a week or two weeks at a time. And when that’s going, everybody feels like they’re going to get a hit with runners in scoring position, and it just keeps compounding. When it’s not, the hardest part is getting out of your own way and just letting things happen, trusting your process.
“When you’re struggling and going through it, it’s challenging mentally, it’s a challenge on everybody individually. The hardest part is that everybody wants to help, everybody wants to help this group and everybody wants to win ballgames. Everybody looking within and trying to find out how they can do that, that’s the part, the pressure part of it, the thing that makes it so mentally grinding.”
Coming into Wednesday, the Cubs had the second fewest hits (200) and runs scored (91) in the majors since the aforementioned May 9.
“The work is positive. I don’t think we’re seeing the results in the game, but you have to stick to the right work,” Counsell said after Tuesday’s game. “That’s important, that you do it, and you have to stick to a plan and a process. I still believe in that, and I think we’re doing the right things.
“It’s frustrating when you don’t get results, for sure. But you’ve got to stick to something. Right now, we’re not seeing the results of it, but we’re doing the right things with some guys that are struggling. And hopefully we can get them going here.”