The Chicago Cubs actually had a bit of momentum going into the series finale with the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday at Wrigley Field.
They had toughed their way into winning the three previous games against their first place rivals, while playing some solid baseball along the way. There was plenty of reason to believe that they’d get the victory on Thursday as well with Shota Imanaga on the mound and the Brewers reeling a bit from their recent losses.
Unfortunately, the old Cubs, from the last two months or so, made a sudden reappearance and went about their routine of offensive flat-lining and missed opportunities. Their 4-1 loss puts them 7 games behind the Brewers in the NL Central Division, when a win could’ve brought them to within 5 games.
Thursday also marked the return to the lineup of the slumping Kyle Tucker after being benched by manager Craig Counsell in order to “reset.” Counsell’s decision to give Tucker some time off came after it was revealed that the four-time All-Star had been playing through a hairline fracture in his hand. The right fielder would only end up missing two-days and three-games, not enough time to really “reset” anything.
Kyle Tucker’s meek return
Many, rightfully, have questioned why the Cubs just chose to address Tucker’s issues, after nearly two months of disastrously subpar hitting.
Many have also questioned why he was brought back so soon after being sat down.
Tucker went 0-4 on Thursday, with a walk, bringing his August batting average down to .138, with no extra bases and only 1 RBI. Since, July 1, he’s hitting .184 with 1 home run and 10 total RBIs. His slump has gotten so bad that a soft line drive to second and a weak fly ball to shallow center were hailed as progress.
Whatever the case, the correlation between Tucker’s return and the return of the Cubs’ offensive doldrums didn’t go unnoticed.
Bring back the kids!
Sam Olbur of the Locked on Cubs podcast voiced the apparent consensus opinion regarding Tucker’s return:
“At the end of the day, he’s struggling mightily and he’s hurting the team while playing right now and the best thing for this team right now is for Owen Caissie and Matt Shaw to be in the lineup. And the best thing for this team right now is for Kyle Tucker to sit down, maybe go to Arizona, do whatever he needs to do to get right because, long term, the Cubs need him to be really good, but right now he’s not.”
Substituting some young energy for the funk surrounding Tucker’s slump is what the team needs, as evidenced by their three-game run against the Brewers with Tucker on the bench. Except, Counsell and the Cubs are, obviously, not about to hear it.
Chicago Cubs, too stuck on analytics?
And why is that? Olbur also has his theory on that:
“Why did he come back after two days off when you were winning games and winning games because of the youth movement? I’ll tell you why. Because Craig Counsell, Jed Hoyer, and Carter Hawkins, they don’t believe in that. They just believe in the projections of the next day and they don’t believe in momentum and they don’t believe in, just, juice. They don’t believe in any of that stuff.”
This certainly wouldn’t be the first time it’s been pointed out that the Cubs organization appears to be too focused on analytics at the expense of the human element.
“They are too analytically driven on the North Side of Chicago,” ranted Marc ‘Silvy’ Silverman of the Waddle & Silvy show on ESPN 1000. “They don’t coach human stuff. They don’t scout, ever, with their eyes. They never make a decision based on their eye…They go with their matchups, they say, ‘Kyle Tucker can’t be this bad for this long. He’s gotta rise back to the top…His expected this, his expected that.’ They are not managing humans over there anymore!”
If Counsell and the Cubs are, indeed, stuck on their data sheets and projections, this could end up being a long rest of the season. They just might ride the struggling Tucker into a disappointing end to what promised to be a magical season.
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