This Post is About the Cubs’ Otherworldly Lack of Clutch Hits, So You Should Ignore It If You Think That’ll Enrage You

Chicago Cubs President of Baseball Operations Jed Hoyer was on the Marquee broadcast in the early innings of yesterday’s Cubs-Rays series finale. Among other things, he talked about how the Cubs seem to have really struggled to come through in the biggest moments this year, and that has a disproportionately negative impact on the team’s record.

Not that any of us were unaware of that fact – we watch the games! – but it was a notable acknowledgement that the organization, at its highest levels, also knows just how bad Cubs hitters have been when it matters the most.

And then the Cubs went on to go 0-5 with four strikeouts in the final two innings when any one of those at bats could have won them the game.

That’s when I decided it was time to check back in on those high-leverage stats to see just how bad things had gotten. You may recall, about two weeks ago, we looked at FanGraphs’ “Clutch” statistic, which measures the difference in a player’s performance in the highest-leverage spots and their usual baseline of performance. In other words, it’s a stat that tells you about the sequencing of performance – did a guy do some of his best work when the game was on the line, or did he mostly succeed when it didn’t matter?

So I’m going to run through some numbers, just for sharing purposes.

I want to note here that “Clutch” – and variants like it – is not a sticky statistic year to year. For the vast majority of players, it’s all just statistical noise. Some guys get a lot of big hits in huge moments one year, and then don’t the next. So that is to say that none of the following numbers necessarily says anything about the constitution of these players (or the team), nor does it necessarily predict what will happen over the next four months. It’s just a measure of what HAS happened, and so far, it’s been gobsmacking …

First, this isn’t necessarily about mere hits with runners in scoring position, because not all situations with runners in scoring position are created equally. Sometimes – with a huge lead, for example – they kinda don’t matter. But other times – with the game on the line in the 8th or 9th inning, like yesterday – they can decide the whole thing. So the fact that the Cubs, as a team, are hitting a league-average .257 with runners in scoring position doesn’t really tell you much. (In fact, given the Clutch numbers we’re about to discuss, it’s all the more startling. It means the Cubs are LOADING UP on their RISP hits when it doesn’t matter nearly as much!)

In high-leverage moments, overall, the Cubs are hitting just .223/.308/.301, with a 67 wRC+ (third worst in baseball). In low-leverage moments? Brace yourself. The Cubs are hitting .260/.337/.445 with a whopping 114 wRC+ (second best in baseball). The Cubs have been a titanic of an offense when the game does not necessarily hang in the balance. And in the moments when one swing could turn an L into a W? They collectively hit like a guy who would be the worst hitter in baseball over a full season.

That gargantuan disparity means the Cubs’ Clutch number is massively negative. At -6.26, the Cubs not only have the worst Clutch number in baseball, they have it by more than 3 points over the second-to-worst team. For context, the *BEST* Clutch score in baseball right now belongs to the Orioles, at 3.42. So the distance from the very best to average is approximately the same distance from the Cubs to the second worst team. The Cubs haven’t just been bad in the biggest moments. They’ve been so bad that it has fundamentally transformed their season.

And it’s not just a situation where a few huge individual struggles are bringing down the whole team. Another brace-yourself-moment: every single Cubs regular has a negative Clutch score so far this season. Every. Single. One. There is literally not one regular hitter who has performed even the teeniest, tiniest bit better when the game was on the line. Hell, there is not even one guy who has simply performed AS WELL in high-leverage moments as he has overall.

There are just three Cubs hitters who’ve taken any plate appearances at all this year that have positive Clutch numbers: Luis Torrens, who is long gone. Edwin Rios, who can’t buy playing time. And Nick Madrigal, who was sent to Iowa because his overall numbers were so abysmal. And even those three are barely above 0. Madrigal leads the whole pack at 0.24.

On the other side of things, the Cubs have four regulars already at -0.70 or worse: Patrick Wisdom, Seiya Suzuki, Cody Bellinger, and Christopher Morel. That means those four have had the biggest chances to swing the most games, and generally have failed to do so repeatedly. It doesn’t mean they are bad players. It doesn’t mean this is a concerning data point about their makeup. It just means that, so far – in a relatively small sample – they’ve had the chances to transform a whole lot of losses into wins, and they just haven’t come through.

And, like I said, they aren’t alone. Everyone else is negative, too. The only guys who are even close to neutral are Ian Happ (-0.01), Miguel Amaya (-0.03), and Mike Tauchman (-0.03). The plague touches everyone.

Again, I want to really hammer home the idea that these are all very small samples, and, in some cases, minuscule variances. This is not commenting upon player talent or mindset or whatever. It’s just documenting what *HAS HAPPENED* and *HAS VERY DEFINITELY IMPACTED* the Cubs’ season so far.

It’s how you wind up with overall numbers that seem to suggest you should be at least a .500 team, and yet you look at the record and you’re seven games below. It doesn’t take a child’s imagination to think back on the season so far and come up with, say, four games where just one hit would’ve flipped the thing. And just like that, with no other changes in anything the Cubs have done – just four hits spread across two+ months – the Cubs have a winning record.

That’s not a comment on whether the Cubs are secretly good or bad. It is instead just a note on how much the sequencing of hits can matter in this fickle sport.

In another universe, this same Cubs team is basically performing identically overall, but a disproportionate number of their hits are coming in the biggest spots. That team is being lauded as being the upstart surprise of the year in MLB. Their fans are marveling at how THESE CUBS always seem to come through! Sounds nice. Sounds fun. Yet maybe that team, and the one that exists in our universe, really aren’t so different when you drill down.

Not that it matters. None of it matters. Eat at Arby’s. Happy Cubs off-day.