At Cubs' season midpoint, 'we have to play better'

SAN FRANCISCO -- There were positives in the middle months of last season for the Cubs. After a dismal May, the North Siders chipped away at the early deficit, rattled off enough wins to convince the front office to buy at the Trade Deadline and pushed back into the thick of the National League playoff picture.

That all came before the late September slide that left the Cubs one win behind the last Wild Card spot. That is not an experience this year’s Cubs squad wants to repeat, but a 4-3 loss to the Giants on Wednesday at the season’s midpoint has created a similarly steep hill to surmount as a year ago.

“I don't want it to be like last year,” Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner said. “We did come up short at the end of the year. It was nice that we made that push at the Trade Deadline, and we were on the winning side of that end, but that's not the goal. The goal is at the end of it. That remains true right now and we need to play better.”

Through the first 81 games of this campaign, the Cubs are 37-44 and sit 11 games back of the NL Central-leading Brewers and five games behind the NL’s third Wild Card slot. A year ago, Chicago was 38-43 and five games off the division pace at the midpoint of the 162-game schedule.

One factor of this season that has frustrated the Cubs has been the Major League-leading 33 one-run games the club has played to date. Wednesday’s defeat was Chicago’s 19th loss decided by one run (also the most in MLB). The tightly contested games have reduced the margin for error for pitchers and heightened the pressure on the offense.

Cubs manager Craig Counsell has stressed the importance of not letting such losses linger mentally when the next game arrives.

“That’s the way the game works,” Counsell said. “You’re going to have a result and you’re going to have a game the next day. And you can’t let the result of the night before affect the play the next day. That’s what we’ve got to keep doing. I think we’ve done a good job of that, but obviously we’re not getting the results we want.”

In their latest setback, the Cubs had a rookie starter -- righty Hayden Birdsong -- making his Major League debut for the Giants opposite Hayden Wesneski. Birdsong was able to limit the damage to three runs in his 4 2/3 innings before San Francisco’s bullpen handled the rest. Overall, the Cubs ended 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position.

Cubs rookie Pete Crow-Armstrong delivered a two-out RBI single in the second and scored from first (needing only 8.9 seconds to do so, per Statcast) on a single by Miguel Amaya in the fourth. Seiya Suzuki ended Birdsong’s night with a two-out homer in the fifth. That was where the Cubs’ offense stalled.

“Three runs tonight. One run last night,” said Counsell, whose club has scored 10 runs total during this four-game losing streak. “That’s not going to win you a lot of games.”

The Cubs also ran into a handful of outs on the basepaths against the Giants. Christopher Morel was thrown out at second in the fourth on an aggressive attempt to stretch a single into a double. He was also picked off first base in the sixth. Then in the ninth, Chicago attempted a double steal of second and third base, but Giants reliever Tyler Rogers anticipated the play and nabbed Ian Happ at third.

Hoerner was asked what gives him confidence the Cubs can get things back on track.

“We've had stretches of all parts of our team's game that have had success,” Hoerner said.

The offense was on a roll for the first few weeks, posting a .741 OPS through April 26. Over the next 54 games, the Cubs posted a .647 OPS as a unit, entering Wednesday. The rotation headed into Wednesday’s play with MLB’s third-lowest ERA (3.26) since June 10. The baserunning has improved in June, during which the Cubs carried a 91.7% stolen-base rate and 33 steals on the month into Wednesday.

“We haven't synced it up at the same time,” Hoerner said. “It's no fault in effort, but it hasn't happened yet.”

The Cubs have 81 games to sort things out.

“It's not as simple as a lone dramatic speech or one thing that the offense focuses on,” Hoerner said. “I think it's the consistency throughout an entire game of seizing moments. And it feels like the big moments in the game just haven't swung our way.”