'Tale of two months': Hoyer weighs in on Cubs' May issues

This story was excerpted from Jordan Bastian’s Cubs Beat newsletter. This week's version was also contributed by Joey Pollizze, who covered the Cubs in Milwaukee that series. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

MILWAUKEE -- The arrival of Memorial Day is often considered a point on the calendar at which teams can take stock of their season performance to date. One-third of baseball’s regular season is in the books and June is just around the corner.

The Cubs -- whose offensive slide over the past month has dropped their record to 28-28 after Wednesday's 10-6 loss in Milwaukee -- still have plenty to sort out in their quest to play on the postseason stage.

“It's kind of a tale of two months, right?” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer told reporters this week. “We really played really good baseball in April, and looked really good and hit really well. Obviously, May has been a struggle. We're [.500]. Obviously, we have aspirations to be a lot better than that.”

Hoyer addressed the offense in a session with the media in Milwaukee this week. Here are some highlights:

On the difficulty of drawing conclusions about the Cubs’ offense given the difference between March/April (5.0 runs per game with a .706 OPS as a team) and May (3.3 runs per game with a .634 OPS as a team):

Hoyer: “Our offense last year was a really good offense. You look at how many runs we scored. Most of the players are the same. It's a very similar group. And we came out of the gates hot against good competition and hit really well. I think our situational stats were probably a little higher than they should have been in terms of guys in scoring position and things like that. May has been the opposite.

“No one's been hot in May. In April, we had some guys hot -- [Michael] Busch was probably the main one. No one's really been hot in May. And I think that when you have no one in the lineup sort of carrying the load, I think that really hurts. And then, situationally, we're [near] the worst team in baseball by any metric with guys in scoring position this month. And that's how you score runs.

“We haven't hit a lot of homers and we haven't hit with guys in scoring position. And that leads to no run scoring. So, you try not to draw too many conclusions from it. I didn't think we're gonna hit with guys in scoring position at the rate we were in April. But we certainly didn't expect this. And, hopefully, we'll settle in the middle somewhere between.”

On there being any underlying numbers in May that offer confidence that the offense is going to turn things around:

Hoyer: “Our batting average on contact is [near] the worst in baseball. I do think some of that is probably soft contact and some of that is probably some bad luck. That's why I think, ultimately, I kind of look at the track record of this group. It was a really good offense last year. And there's a lot of players with track records of performing above this level. So I agree, I think sometimes you can kind of go crazy looking at underlying numbers. And they really have run into a lot of really good pitching. I think that the stuff we faced this month has been really good. But ultimately, you have to beat those pitchers to end up where we want to go.”

On prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong’s strong play (.387 average, three homers, four doubles, five steals, 10 runs and a 1.247 OPS in seven games) at Triple-A Iowa prior to his recall to the Majors on Thursday, and the ongoing balance of calling up players vs. trusting the MLB veterans will get on track:

Hoyer: “Ultimately, the bigger concern has to be the performance of our team. And at some point, if someone like Pete has to come up, or some other player comes up, and maybe certain guys lose that at-bats for a little bit of time, maybe that is necessary. We've had those discussions. We'll continue to. I think one of the hardest aspects of all of these jobs is you want to be patient with guys with track records.

“You know that you're gonna have these struggles during certain times of the year, and you want to be patient. But you can take that patience too far. At some point, you have to have a sense of urgency there and to kind of figure out when that timing is is really difficult. We'll continue to have those discussions. We'll try to figure out how, if we need to spark this offense, we can best do it.”