Can’t Sweep, Won’t Sweep, Don’t Sweep, and Other Cubs Bullets

Jun 12, 2023

Ah, car service day. The day you don’t know how long you’re gonna be sitting in some crowded waiting area, waiting to find out how much lighter your wallet is.

The Cubs have had an incredible SEVEN opportunities to pull off a sweep so far this year, and have succeeded JUST ONCE. That one came against the A’s, which feels like it barely counts. Those other six, including yesterday in San Francisco, are a hint that something is just not quite right with this team.

If you figured the Cubs had a context-neutral 50/50 shot at winning that last game going for a sweep each time (and why wouldn’t you at least assume that, given that they’d just won the previous two?), you know how often they would lose all six games by chance alone? About 1.6% of the time. So either this team is tremendously unlucky in series finales going for the sweep, or there is some factor that tips the scales against themselves.

Hey, maybe they are that 1.6% fluke in these situations. That’s not the same as “impossible.” But it is obviously much more likely that they have failed to pull off at least some of these sweeps for reasons that should have been within their control, either on a game-to-game level, or on a team-construction level (i.e., that 50/50 assumption is not reasonable, because maybe this is a 40/60 true talent team (of course, even then, it would still be only a 4.7% chance of losing all six!)).

You know that Hayden Wesneski has struggled against lefties this year, but are you ready to see the splits after yesterday’s game (which featured, among other things, a couple dingers given up to lefty Joc Pederson)? Righties have hit just .214/.281/.340 off of Wesneski, with a sterling .276 wOBA. He’s struck out 21.6% of them and walked just 6.1%. He’s allowed just 0.98 HR/9 against righties. Ah, but the lefties. They are hitting a whopping .301/.343/.677, with a .427(!) wOBA. He’s walked only 5.9%, but he’s struck out only 14.9%, yikes. And he’s allowed a whopping 3.91 HR/9 against lefties. That’s all just unplayable stuff.

On the one hand, you could be disturbed by how abysmal Wesneski has been against lefties. For me, though, I’m encouraged that he remains highly effective against righties, and drilling down on his struggles is not complex: he needs pitches that he can consistently utilize against lefties. Either he’s gotta get the cutter or changeup to come along, or he’s got to improve the four-seamer quality. Sinkers and sweeping sliders, generally, are not great pitches against lefties, absent (1) pristine command, and (2) at least one out pitch in your back pocket to keep them honest. So the path ahead of Wesneski is clear, and I think that’s more of a positive than a negative. Consider that this same issue was true for Adbert Alzolay, and he has improved dramatically against lefties (albeit in a relief role … ).

I understand that the circumstances are such that you don’t have a number of Triple-A relief arms ready to go at this point*, but I don’t quite understand how the Cubs can justify continuing to give big league innings to Jeremiah Estrada and Brandon Hughes at the moment. Estrada is truly fastball-only at this point, and the fastball is simply not as good as it was last year. Maybe something clicks with the slider here in the big leagues, but it sure hasn’t yet. And Hughes just looks like he’s off. Maybe it is the management of the knee, which has been an issue since Spring Training, but whatever it is, he’s not getting results, and the peripherals aren’t better.

*(Daniel Palencia has had a ROUGH adjustment to the reliever life, with two of his last three appearances complete implosions. Also, Codi Heuer is apparently not ready to return. Keegan Thompson is only just barely starting to show signs of recovering. The Cubs may not be ready to pull the Ben Brown trigger. Caleb Kilian is still starting to mediocre results. Ryan Jensen only just reached Triple-A. Cam Sanders has really struggled this year. Everyone else has been only mediocre. There is nobody banging down the door at the moment, and that’s a major concern.)

Brandon Crawford pitched the 9th against the Cubs yesterday – that’s how badly they were getting smoked – and held the team scoreless:

Brandon Crawford: “I always give pitchers a hard time about it not being hard. I think I proved today that it’s not. They probably don’t love that I have a 0.00 ERA.”— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) June 12, 2023

In fairness, all you proved is that it is easy to pitch against the 2023 Cubs on a Sunday in a series finale when they’re going for the sweep …

Battery back-ups, surge protectors, security equipment, and much more are your Deals of the Day at Amazon. #ad

To be very clear, this is a joke, but it is a good one:

cutch somehow eludes the tag such a veteran move pic.twitter.com/gPot181Itz
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) June 11, 2023

The movement on this pitch is unbelievable:

Mitch Keller, RIDICULOUS 83mph Sweeper. 😳

24 inches (yes, 2 feet) of horizontal break. pic.twitter.com/wWsgIkpvwu
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 11, 2023

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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