The Chicago Cubs’ offensive woes this year are well-documented. But it’s not just a general suckiness offensively that’s burdening the club, there’s a specific, exceptional problem: the Cubs are the worst hitting team in baseball with runners in scoring position.
Naturally, it’s possible to score without runners in scoring position. But, um, a whole lot of runners score from second or third. They just don’t do it for the Cubs. And until they fix this problem, they’ll continue to lose a lot of 2-1, 3-2, even 1-0 contests.
Our friends over at The Friendly Blogfines put together an excellent piece highlighting the Cubs’ failure to hit with runners in scoring position and it’s worth a read.
– On the current road trip the Cubs are a total of 1 for 29 (.034) with runners in scoring position but are 27 for 73 (.370) with no runners in scoring position.
– The Cubs are currently hitting .223 as a team with runners in scoring position, dead last in all of baseball.
– The Current .223 mark is worse than any team has hit with runners in scoring position during a season in the past 5 years.
– The Cubs have 3 of the worst hitters with runners in scoring position of all regulars in the big leagues: Geovany Soto at .204, Mike Fontenot at .205 and Alfonso Soriano at .157.
The worst in baseball in five years – that’s the really startling stat. We’re putting together an article on what that means for the rest of the year, so get excited. But until then, let’s just hope the Cubs can turn things around.