The Defeated Feeling, Sub-.500 for Months, McLeod’s Transition, and Other Cubs Bullets

Sep 12, 2019

Tough week in the Taylor House. Much love to friends for the support. Let’s sports …

There are no real hugely positive things to share a day after the Cubs blow a golden opportunity for the second straight day, and fall into a mid-September tie for the second Wild Card spot. Thus:

Pretty somber Cubs locker room tonight. Always quiet after a loss, like anywhere, but def a team that's down and frustrated right now.

— Jesse Rogers (@JesseRogersESPN) September 12, 2019

There’s no surprise there. These guys know the talent they have. They know how they’ve massively underperformed. They know that a prime year is slipping through their fingers. And they know it isn’t just a recent issue:

Since May 14, the Cubs are 52-54.

— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) September 12, 2019

We can keep doing the hope thing, I guess. That’s all we’ve got at this point.

I would make jokes about this kind of comment in mid-September, but really, what else is the manager supposed to say (Cubs.com): “We can change momentum, but we have to be more consistent offensively,” manager Joe Maddon said. “We win as a group; we lose as a group. But I do believe to get where we want to go, we have to be a consistent offensive team the rest of the season.”

The magic switch is not going to flip. If the Cubs score a lot of runs the rest of the way, it’s going to be because they always had the talent for it, and it just happened to coalesce in this stretch (as it has before this season for periodic stretches). The inconsistency is a feature of this group, not some weird oddity that can be handwaved away. Ride the year out, see what happens, and then get to work. Serious, serious work.

Snacks, drinks, towels, plants, and more are your Deals of the Day at Amazon.

More from Jason McLeod on his transition into a new role on the big league side (Cubs.com): “It’s still to be defined, really. It’s Day 1 of me coming into this role. My background in player evaluation, my experience managing staffs and having led people brings a different perspective to the clubhouse environment. There’s a lot of history with these players. I look forward to having a lot of conversations with Joe, certainly with Theo and Jed. I’ll be on the ground floor now in terms of roster construction conversations. I’ve always been involved, of course, but I also had two other departments I was managing. So now, I’ll be really spearheading conversations about players we might be trying to go get for this club and some initiatives we’d like to put together to help us be better and get back to the World Series.”

I’m hopeful that this role shift will not only allow the Cubs to bring in a new voice/new talent on the scouting and player development side, but also that perhaps McLeod can help get a new voice into the roster construction side of things, since clearly, that has been a massive issue for the Cubs the last couple years, when the whole was much less than the sum of the parts.

Theo Epstein is on the radio right now – more on that soon – but I wanted to drop these two notes, since they’re on point with the McLeod conversation:

Jason McLeod's switch was a "lateral move," Theo Epstein says. It's the last step of McLeod's development to prepare him to be a GM somewhere after years of working in amateur scouting and player development. And for the #Cubs, it's fresh perspective in looking at MLB team.
— 670 The Score (@670TheScore) September 12, 2019

"It's impossible to modernize" if you don't get fresh sets of eyes into your organization, Theo Epstein says in helping explain the #Cubs opening up the amateur scouting and player development head job.
— 670 The Score (@670TheScore) September 12, 2019

Please poach from the Astros, Dodgers, Rays, and/or Yankees, please and thanks.

Heh, memories:

@Michael_Cerami any idea who they are talking about? #funfact pic.twitter.com/gHfSP3dFKq

— Rizzo_Was_My_Captain (@kielholmes_3) September 12, 2019

written by

Brett Taylor

Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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