Finally Some Rest, Cease Was Tough, Happ’s Struggles, and Other Cubs Bullets

Finally an off-day for the Cubs after a 16-game stretch, in which they went 9-7. Pretty hard to argue with that when you consider the teams the Cubs were facing and the players they were missing. Yeah, I can pick and choose moments and say they “should” have been 10-6 or 11-5, but we all know you can just as easily go the other direction with that stuff. So I’ll take 9-7 and the off-day with a smile. Get everyone back and healthy and attack this next stretch …

  • If you aligned rotations at random, and accounting for injuries, it’s about a 30% chance that you would face the same starting pitcher in two three-game series against a particular team. I am bummed that the Cubs didn’t get the 70% vis a vis the Padres and Dylan Cease. Because he was incredible yesterday, and whether the bats were struggling or not, I just don’t think they had a chance. He wasn’t quite as good when he beat them last month, but that one wasn’t fun either. Sure, you have to beat good pitching sometimes if you want to be a playoff team, but it’s also true that guys like Cease are putting up huge numbers for a reason: they do very well against their opponent, including good opponents, more often than not.
  • And like I said last night, now the Cubs are also going to get Paul Skenes and Jared Jones likely twice in two series, plus the Braves in two quick series, too. Gonna be a tough, tough stretch for the team, and the bats. I just hope the Cubs’ pitching continues to hold up (and the bullpen improves), the bats can squeak across some runs, and people think about the match-ups before they shred a group of batters. Oh, and I hope Seiya Suzuki comes back raking.
  • Speaking of struggling bats, I think Ian Happ’s issues go beyond the match-ups of late. Happ had a strong first 10 days of the season, but since then, he’s hit just .169/.295/.225/62 wRC+, with a 14.3% BB, a 30.5% K, and three extra-base hits total. It hasn’t been bad luck. He’s striking out way too much, he’s not making quality contact, and he’s putting it on the ground a whopping 53.6% of the time during that stretch. Something is off, without question, and I suspect that if Cody Bellinger and Seiya Suzuki hadn’t both been out at the same time for so long, Happ probably would’ve gotten some days off to try to shake it off.
  • All that said, I think it’s very important to remind ourselves of three things: (1) although it feels like an eternity, we’re really just talking about one month (and actually, the numbers have been good the last week); (2) Happ has had these ice cold stretches before, has figured it out, and has caught fire – we’ve seen it MULTIPLE times; and (3) overall, by the end of the year, Happ has been one of the most consistent offensive performers for the Cubs. He has literally never had a below-average offensive season by wRC+ in his career, and a bounce back is logically far more likely than continued struggles. It’ll probably help when Suzuki returns to fill out the lineup further.
  • “I’ve been really ahead of offspeed pitches and even ahead on some fastballs,” Happ said of the struggles, per The Athletic. “Trying to back it up a little bit. That puts you in between on a guy that’s throwing upper 90s. Working through some stuff. It’s a long season. Little bit of a tough stretch …. It feels really good when you hit one hard. It’s been a little bit. Had a good series against Milwaukee. Hit a ball the other way really hard that felt really good off the bat. Was able to get on base a bunch and feel like I was making some progress. Then the last couple days, not where I wanted it.”
  • More from Craig Counsell on the loss yesterday, including Cease’s performance against his team, Christopher Morel’s defense, and Happ’s struggles:
  • The Braves are trading little-used utility man Luis Guillorme to the Angels for some reason. It’s not a big deal either way – he has not been useful for a couple years – but it’s just kind of a weird one. The Angels, to me, look like obvious sellers already.
  • Yu showing Shota some secret moves. He’s still a Cub:
  • Too bad he didn’t tell the Cubs the secret to hitting Dylan Cease.
  • This should not be a home run – but I suppose you combine the college ball with the college bat with Jac’s unique power, and you get this:
  • Throwing it back over 30 years to the last Chicago Cubs cycle:
  • written by

    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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