Cubs’ late rally forces extras, but frustrating 11th foils bid for win

CHICAGO -- Inside the interview room in the Cubs’ clubhouse at Wrigley Field, manager Craig Counsell expressed confidence that his team’s struggling offense would find its footing here before too long.

“Look, it’s going to turn,” Counsell said. “It’s going to happen.”

Down the hall, standing at his locker in the immediate wake of a frustrating 4-3 loss to the Pirates in 11 innings at Wrigley Field, Alex Bregman offered a similarly phased dose of optimism in a quiet room.

“It’ll turn,” Bregman said. “We’ve just got to keep fighting the fight.”

The clip that will make the rounds after Chicago’s fourth loss in six games will be veteran lefty Caleb Thielbar firing wildly beyond the reach of first baseman Matt Shaw, allowing Pittsburgh’s go-ahead run to score in the 11th inning. Thielbar said it made him feel “sick” to know that his errant throw on a routine comebacker in front of the mound sent the Cubs to the loss column.

Really, though, this defeat was built behind Chicago’s 1-for-15 performance with runners in scoring position – a day after going 0-for-8 with RISP in a 2-0 loss to the Pirates. The Cubs had 16 baserunners over the final seven frames, and only Bregman’s game-tying single in the ninth turned one into a run.

That has been an unfortunate theme in the first 14 games of the season for the Cubs. There have also been positive trends underneath the surface-level statistics, but the results have not aligned with the propensity for hard contact or the pile of walks.

“We have really good players that haven’t gotten going yet,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said on Friday. “And at the end of the day, they’ll get to where their baseball card says they should be, or better. That’s a positive thing. We have a lot of positive regression coming to us on the offensive side. Hopefully it happens soon.”

Entering Saturday’s action, the Cubs had a 44.2% hard-hit rate as a team, ranking fourth in the Majors. The team’s 8.7% barrel rate, per Statcast, was tied for seventh highest in baseball. Chicago had a top-five exit velocity (89.7 mph) as a team and one of MLB’s top walk rates (11.9%).

The .392 expected slugging percentage the Cubs carried into Saturday was 11th in MLB, while the team’s actual slugging (.355) ranked 21st. The difference of -.037 ranked 10th in terms of tough luck. A trio of Cubs -- Moisés Ballesteros (-.154), Dansby Swanson (-.145) and Carson Kelly (-.131) -- ranked among the top 40 hitters in that regard.

Those are things players can look at to maintain hope that “it’ll turn” before too long.

“The quality of contact is a huge deal,” Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner said. “Our team is walking at a really high rate; I know that. Sometimes, you go back and forth on that. Obviously, walking is a really good thing, but this lineup is also built to impact the ball. Sometimes, that comes out of being passive. I don’t know if that’s the case for us right now.”

Hoerner said it is pretty consistent that a team will have a couple of players “grinding through things” throughout the season. It can be more pronounced early when small samples magnify such things (for example, Michael Busch is currently in an 0-for-30 slump).

“I think the group has a healthy perspective,” Hoerner said. “Within all the underlying numbers, there’s different things that matter to different guys. But I think generally, if you’re controlling the strike zone and you’re hitting the ball hard, you’ll be in a good place.”

The Cubs struggled early Saturday against Pirates starter Braxton Ashcraft, who racked up a career-high nine strikeouts through his five innings. Through the seventh, Chicago’s only two runs came via groundouts. The lineup produced more runners as the game persisted, but the necessary hit to break things open was missing.

Helped by the automatic runners, the North Siders had bases loaded in the 10th and 11th innings. Swanson grounded out to end the first chance, and Seiya Suzuki popped out to end the game in the final opportunity.

“Offense is sequential,” Counsell said. “And on days when it’s difficult for the home run to be a part of your offense, it’s even more important that sequential offense happens. You have to have three, four straight good at-bats to score runs, because you’re going to get some home runs knocked down. That’s part of it.

“And that’s really where we’ve probably failed, is we’ve had the two good at-bats and then the next at-bat has not worked. And that’s what’s going to need to happen.”