The Cubs had a rough week, but there were still some good performances.
The Cubs went 2-4 over the six games since the last installment of this series. Things seemed to go south after the extra-inning collapse against the Giants last Tuesday. Let’s hope that is not a sign of things to come.
The good news, hopefully, is that the Cubs now enter a stretch of 21 games that are all against teams currently under .500. The combined record of those teams (Marlins, White Sox, Reds, Rockies and Nationals) is 71-132, a .350 winning percentage. This is a time where a good team should show it can go on a run, maybe 15-6 or even 16-5.
Speaking of winning percentages, the Cubs’ current 23-18 record is a .561 percentage. That would translate to a 91-71 record for the season, We’d take that, I suspect.
Here’s who’s hot and who’s not for the Cubs over the last week.
Three up
Dansby Swanson continues to hit
Swanson’s on-base streak reached 12 games with his hit Sunday, and over the six games against the Giants and Mets he batted .421/.522/.684 (8-for-19) with two doubles, a home run, four walks and five runs scored.
The home run, Saturday in New York, was a laser beam [VIDEO].
Matthew Boyd continues to put up good starts
Boyd threw six innings and allowed two runs in both of his starts over the six-game span, and has apparently found his strikeout pitch. He struck out seven Giants and eight Mets and leads the team in K’s with 45.
Here’s his whiff of Pete Alonso in the first inning Sunday [VIDEO].
Brad Keller moves up in the bullpen circle of trust
Keller appeared four times over the week, including being the opener Saturday against the Mets, and did not give up a run while allowing just two baserunners and striking out four. Since his disastrous outing against the Dodgers April 22, Keller has not allowed a run in nine appearances and allowed just six baserunners in 31 batters faced, with nine strikeouts.
Here, he strikes out Francisco Lindor Saturday on a 99 mile per hour fastball [VIDEO].
Three down
Pete Crow-Armstrong isn’t stealing bases these days
In this season’s first 27 games, PCA stole 12 bases with just one caught stealing. He hit .295/.339/.543 with five home runs over that span, and the Cubs went 17-10.
Since then, in 14 games PCA has stolen just one base in three attempts. In those 14 games he’s batting .204/.232/.519 and the Cubs are 6-8. He has hit five homers in those 14 games, which is great, but the rest of the numbers apart from the SLG are pretty bad.
It isn’t necessarily a coincidence, but I would like to see PCA use his speed more on the basepaths. The team, too — in those first 27 games the Cubs stole 44 bases in 50 attempts. Since then? Five steals in eight attempts.
PCA and the other Cubs who can run should do more of it, in my view.
Ryan Pressly, yikes
You don’t need to see his horrific inning against the Giants again, I don’t think. Pressly did throw one scoreless inning Friday against the Mets, though he did allow a hit and a walk.
That was the sixth inning of that game, a fairly low-leverage situation. That’s where I suspect we will see Pressly pitch, for the near future at least.
Seiya Suzuki’s bat is ice cold
Over the six games, Suzuki went 3-for-27 (.111) with no walks and seven strikeouts.
He did play three games in the outfield uneventfully, one in right field to give Kyle Tucker a break for a day and two in place of Ian Happ while Happ sat with a minor oblique tweak.
Suzuki’s too good a hitter to be in a slump like this for too long. In fact, the entire Cubs team more or less went into a slump for the week. After scoring nine runs in the series opener against the Giants last Tuesday, the Cubs scored just 16 runs in the other five games. Hopefully the offense wakes up this week against the Marlins and White Sox.