All is Lost

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube90 Comments

I’ve been diligently looking for work and have some interviews here and there, hopefully something sticks soon. And I guess the timing is good for when I start an eventual new job because the Cubs’ season is over:

The Cubs now sit at 79-76 on the season. The Diamondbacks and Mets currently hold the last 2 National League Wild-Card spots with the Braves still challenging behind them in the standings.

“It was a tough year, obviously,” Kyle Hendricks said after Saturday’s loss. “Just up-and-down. It just seemed like we’d catch steam and then couldn’t maintain it.

“Just a really up-and-down year. Not surprising we’re at about .500. Just how it went for us this year. When we played our good baseball, played fundamental, we could beat anybody. But we just couldn’t put it together for the full year this year.”

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Technically there are a week of games remaining, including the finale against the Nationals that has yet to be played as I clickety-clack, but (soon-to-be former) Cubs World Series hero Kyle Hendricks is correct in that the lack of consistency and the absolutely putrid months of May and June (seriously, what was up with that) killed the season. It’s a disappointment on many levels for a team we all thought could make some noise at the beginning of the year. At least they weren’t eliminated in like July like certain other Chicago-area teams.

As the Cubs play out the string, it was interesting to see Craig Counsell and Jameson Taillon address the fact that they were so far behind the Milwaukee Brewers (seriously, who saw this gap coming?) and how they really needed to work to catch up. Taillon reiterated the need to generate a 90-win team at minimum. Whether we expected the Brewers to be this good, or whether they deserve to be this good, is immaterial, as the Cubs could have and should have done more to address the flaws that we were all witness to during this season. I think there are plenty of positives to take into the next season, including how they did make a late season surge again (a bit too little and too late, of course), but as Counsell implied, some difficult decisions will be made as Jed Hoyer enters his final guaranteed season as president of baseball operations.

I can say with some level of certainty that guys like Kyle Hendricks (sad face) and Drew Smyly (meh) won’t be back. Whether Cody Bellinger opts out or not is up in the air, but with Pete Crow-Armstrong maturing into the everyday center fielder, Bellinger’s value if he stayed on the Cubs may take a hit, so that is worth monitoring as the offseason draws closer. I’m going to take an educated guess that the Cubs also upgrade their bench, at the minimum, and find a way to get more consistent relievers although we all know that bullpen arms are volatile.

The important thing is to raise the projection in the offseason, as this team will max out at 86 wins if they run the table in the remaining time. That is probably highly unlikely as they are hard pressed to sweep a Phillies club that needs to compete for the top seed, and a Reds team with very little to lose and some bright spots of their own, but as many have lamented throughout 2024, if a few of the saves hadn’t been blown and if a few more hits had dropped, things would be really different. So the issue is not only the projection, but luck and preparation. Whoever joins the club, whether it is a promotion from the minors, a trade, or a free agent signing, needs to be onboarded effectively. Slumps need to be nipped faster. Struggles need to be addressed with more urgency. I don’t envy the people in charge who have to deal with it.

Ricketts was selling Cubs Convention tickets pretty recently, so as we wait for the regular season to end and watch another World Series without the Cubs, let’s hope they give us something to be excited about in what we hope to be the inflection point of this “retool” period. Baseball is better when the Cubs are in the playoffs, and while I am thankful that they played meaningful games almost into the final week of the season, there is a lot of work to do to get them back into the dance.

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  3. berselius

    At least they weren’t eliminated in like July like certain other Chicago-area teams.

    RC coming in hot against Caleb Williams and the Bears, wow.

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  11. Perkins

    Padres Silver Slugger was surprisingly tough…at least thinking of an answer other than Gwynn and Tatis Jr.

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  13. Author
    Rice Cube

    Another fantastic performance by Shota and I think they should probably just let him rest now…for the game, wanna see how he does in his next start which will likely be the last of the season.

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  18. Author
    Rice Cube

    The Twins have given up today, there’s gonna be a three way tie for the final two AL wild card spots all from the same division that the White Sox are in (dying laughing)

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  33. Perkins

    Random pre-offseason thoughts:
    -It feels like the Cubs will need to make one or more drastic trades to improve the offense or free up space for a free agent because it’s going to be tough to add what’s needed at just C and DH
    -If Bellinger doesn’t opt out, that only gets worse and I bet he or Happ gets traded
    -Or they could throw all the money at one of Corbin Burnes/Roki Sasaki/Max Fried and 2-3 relievers and lean into run prevention

    I think this team has a lot of good complementary players but it’s kind of the roster equivalent of a junkballer. It needs a legitimate star to lengthen the lineup.

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  47. andcounting

    The endangered but not extinct “You got hit by that pitch on purpose, get back in there and hit” call has been spotted in Philly.

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  51. BVS

    Rice Cube,

    Well, the Drew Smyly formerly known as a pitcher is on the mound now. Lead-off walk. But he has recorded two outs and then gave up a long pop up that Tauchman probably should have caught, but Hoerner did. So a scoreless inning for a change.

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  65. andcounting

    The Tigers being in the playoff picture has overtaken the White Sox quest for epic futility on my scale of interest, but I fucking love that those two storylines have a chance to intersect to close out the season with Jason Benetti in the booth. Karma is having a 10+ WAR season.

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  75. Perkins

    So the Mets and Braves play a DH the day before the postseason begins. Wild to see MLB hasn’t improved its hurricane contingency plans since 2008.

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  79. uncle dave

    Rice Cube,

    I know it’s really on brand for me to only crawl out of my cave to post about the A’s on a Cubs blog, but I watched the game and the postgame yesterday and it was really rough. Folks hanging around for an hour-plus after the game, just sitting there with their kids and staring blankly at the field, old folks who I recognize from being at the ballpark, all of it. NBC shitcanned the whole studio crew as of the end of the season and the guys in the studio were just talking through it and weren’t pulling any punches at all.

    I had a conversation with one of my co-workers who grew up out here. We talked about how his dad used to take him to fireworks night, and how his kid was now just old enough to go to games but they only got to do it once before the team left. It’s just sad to me. Even when the team sucked it was nice to just have random conversations with the guy at the butcher counter or whatever about how the season was going. That’s one reason why I don’t really follow the Cubs anymore, there’s just not too many folks for me to talk to about the team these days except for my dad and you guys. But all of this makes me kind of wonder how much baseball I’m going to wind up watching from here on out. I’ve tried to audition new teams this year but without that local pull it’s really tough to get into it.

    I dunno. It’s been a while since sports have made me this sad.

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