CHICAGO – In the hours leading up to Wednesday’s game, Cubs manager Craig Counsell had a chat with slugger Seiya Suzuki. The general message delivered was that every game is a chance to turn the page on anything that happened a day earlier.
“I talked to Seiya about this today,” Counsell said. “You get to show up the next day and the, ‘Get to start over and have a great day’ is presented to you.”
Suzuki then went out and had a solid day against the Athletics.
In a 5-4 loss to the A’s in 10 innings, Suzuki launched his first home run in nearly a month and made a pair of impressive defensive plays in right field. It was the kind of all-around performance that put the Cubs outfielder’s full capabilities on display, which is why the last few weeks have been particularly perplexing.
Suzuki’s performance could not, however, halt an A’s comeback against Chicago’s bullpen or the Cubs’ eighth consecutive loss at home. He was waiting in the on-deck circle when Alex Bregman lined out to right field to end the game.
“We’re not winning a lot of baseball games right now,” Counsell said. “And we’re not playing well enough to win a lot of baseball games. You have to earn it, and we’re not earning it. It’s not some string of massive bad luck. We’re not earning wins. Flat out.”
Getting Suzuki going would certainly help the lineup get rolling again, too.
“Hopefully we’re getting him there,” Counsell said.
Facing A’s lefty Jeffrey Springs in the second inning, Suzuki connected with a 3-1 fastball and sent it rocketing off the bat at 108.9 mph, per Statcast. The way Suzuki casually finished his swing, moving his bat into his right hand before dropping it to the ground, made it clear that he knew the baseball he just launched with it was now a souvenir for the fans in the left-center-field bleachers.
Suzuki had waited weeks for that feeling again.
“It’s been a while,” Suzuki said via his interpreter, Edwin Stanberry. “But I’m glad it happened today. Hopefully I can keep that consistency there.”
And in the third inning, Pete Crow-Armstrong also went deep off Springs for a two-run homer that spotted the Cubs a 3-2 lead at the time. It was the first time this year that Suzuki and Crow-Armstrong homered in the same game -- after they did so eight times last season, including in three games last June.
Prior to Wednesday, Suzuki’s last home run came in the fourth inning on May 8 against the Rangers on the road. He had not homered at Wrigley Field since May 4 against the Reds. The blast off Springs ended a drought of 92 plate appearances without a homer for Suzuki, who had 35 between the regular season and playoffs last year.
Suzuki hit just .167 with a .403 OPS across his previous 22 games leading up to Wednesday, managing just two doubles among his 14 hits in the 89 PAs in that period. In the process, the outfielder went from hitting .304 with a .980 OPS on May 8 to heading into play Wednesday batting .239 with a .711 OPS on the year.
“I’m not worried about him,” Cubs outfielder Ian Happ said. “Sometimes you get matchups, you get weeks where things aren’t rolling. It goes for everybody. Everybody goes through that. But I have all the faith in the world that at the end of the year, his baseball card is going to look a lot like it has for the last four seasons.”
It was not a perfect night, given that Suzuki did not get a hit in his final three trips to the plate. That included a hard-hit (100.9 mph off the bat) double-play groundout in the eighth inning with the game caught in a 4-4 deadlock.
In the top of the second inning, Suzuki made a great sliding catch on a sinking fly ball to snag a would-be hit away from Jeff McNeil. In the eighth, he helped limit the A’s to two runs in the frame by throwing out Tyler Soderstrom trying to stretch an RBI single into a double. Heading into Wednesday, Suzuki had two Outs Above Average with a positive Fielding Run Value (three) after multiple years of being rated below average.
“I want my teammates to trust me,” Suzuki said. “I know more than anyone that if you do make a mistake out there, that you can lose trust. I’m glad that I can kind of separate the hitting side with the defense and just go out there on the field and play well defensively. Hopefully I can carry that on for the rest of the season.”