The Cubs Are Mashing Their Way to Wins
Since June 11th, the Chicago Cubs have won fifteen of the twenty-one games they have played.
These wins aren’t a product of who the Cubs are facing, as they’ve come against teams in all sorts of places in the standings.
The winning has been because of the offense; they are near the top of the league leaderboard in several offensive metrics. In this stretch, the Cubbies are first in walks, second in runs batted in, third in on-base percentage, third in slugging percentage, and fourth in home runs.
What is so interesting about the Cubs recent success is that their pitching statistics during that time are not at the top of the league, which puts their offensive success into perspective.
While the offense as a whole is thriving, three players have been standing out. The Cubs would not be where they currently are without the contributions from Pete Crow-Armstrong, Seiya Suzuki, and Dansby Swanson.
These three have been extraordinary during this recent stretch of Cubs baseball.
Collectively, they have twenty-one home runs and sixty-six runs batted in. The fascinating part about these three success stories for the Cubs is that they are all different. Pete Crow-Armstrong has been the Cubs’ best offensive and all-around player for a while, and he has continued to hit extremely well recently. He has been so great that, before Game One against the Cardinals, he was named the National League Player of the Month for June. This is yet another reason for Cubs fans to smile when they think of the year that Crow-Armstrong is having. Seiya Suzuki was having an admirable year before the Cubs took off, but he has really kicked it up a gear. Before this period in the Cubs’ schedule, Suzuki had a .742 OPS, which is above league average. But his OPS is now at .806, reflecting the kind of success he has had over the last month or so.
Now for the most interesting success story of the three, Dansby Swanson was on a once-in-a-lifetime tear heading into the series with the Cardinals.
Compared to Suzuki’s breakthrough, Dansby’s OPS before June 11th was .607, a sizeable margin below the league average. His OPS now sits at .719, just a mind-boggling stretch for Dansby. Crow-Armstrong, Suzuki, and Dansby have been pivotal to the team’s recent success; it will be interesting to see what the future holds for these three.
As far as the pitching goes for the Cubbies, it has been around league average in this time frame. The team ERA sits around the middle of the pack at 18th, and the total hits allowed at 20th. Part of this is due to the number of pitching injuries they have, but that can be taken as a positive. Cubs fans can think about how successful this team has been without some of their best arms, and the potential this club has when they are healthy.
The kind of run this team is on is special, and it shows what they are capable of when every side of the ball is going their way.
They have won 15 of their last 21, with their pitching average.
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