Firing David Ross is not the answer to the Cubs’ problems

The Cubs schedule in 2023 is front-loaded and this early roadtrip through Minnesota, Houston and Philadelphia was on that was easy to circle as a test for the new and improved team. After all, the Twins have been competitive in a weak AL Central division. Houston and Philadelphia faced off in the 2022 World Series. How would the team Jed Hoyer constructed in the off season fare against some of the best teams in baseball?

It turned out the answer was an abysmal 2-7 record for the Chicago Cubs. To be clear, I’m not here to sugar coat how bad that is. If you got two answers right out of nine on a quiz, you’d fail with a 22 percent. If we extrapolated a 2-7 record out to the remainder of the season the Cubs would be on pace to win just 36 games out of 162 — a pace not that dissimilar to the Oakland Athletics who were 9-31 after their first 40 games. The Cubs lost those seven games in every way possible. There were multiple blowouts at the hands of the Twins and the Phillies. There were close fought battles that the Cubs fell achingly short on against the Astros and Phillies, and then there were gut punches like this come-from-behind Astros victory after the Cubs had led by five runs.

By the end of a road trip the Cubs had scored 37 runs while giving up 64 for a -27 run differential. Fan frustration was palpable and David Ross was trending on Twitter, with many frustrated fans wondering if he was the right man to lead this Cubs team. The angst over a terrible roadtrip is understandable, but firing David Ross is not the answer. It isn’t like bench coach Andy Green would have better options in the bullpen, or the magical answer for the Cubs continued lack of hitting with runners in scoring position.

The 2023 Chicago Cubs are a team that is bound to frustrate fans a little bit. The highs are exceptional, with an improved offense, especially at the top of the lineup plus a rotation that has performed admirably well when stacked up against the rest of the league. They are capable of putting together an 11-6 run against the division leading Brewers, Rangers and Dodgers to start the season — and they are capable of stringing together a 3-10 stretch against the middling Marlins, Cardinals and, yes (at least thus far in 2023) Phillies the next month.

The final grades for a baseball team happen over the course of 162 games by design because any small sample stretch can be extrapolated to tremendous success for the worst teams or absolute catastrophe for the best ones. So let’s dig in a bit today on where the Cubs have fallen down in this last stretch and why precisely none of these things would be improved by replacing Ross with someone else on his coaching staff.

The managerial environment

Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic has a great piece out today that looks at a number of things, but specifically, which managers, if any, are on the hot seat. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but here’s the snippet about David Ross:

David Ross, Cubs: This is Ross’ fourth season, and the Cubs expected improvement, if not quite contention, as they climbed out of their rebuild. Their 11-6 start built optimism, but they since have gone 9-20, playing a number of close games that have magnified Ross’ in-game decision-making.

Which isn’t to say that Ross, 46, is in trouble, not when he is signed through 2024 with an option for 2025 and continues to receive public support from president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer. As The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma wrote in a recent mailbag, “I don’t think Hoyer views Ross as a placeholder and I don’t think he’s anywhere near being on the hot seat.”

Rosenthal covers a number of elements in this piece. Specifically, how front offices and managers collaborate, how teams are managed collectively, minimizing the impact one manager can have, and, importantly, looking at the mixed results moving on in the middle of a season can have. For every Phillies success story there is an Angels shrug emoji. Importantly, when teams are firing managers mid-season, they are generally elevating the next man up internally — who exactly should that be for the Cubs? Probably Green, and frankly, his last time in the managers seat with the 2019 Padres didn’t work out all that well.

I bring this up mainly because if you think there are problems with the management of the 2023 Cubs, those problems likely extend through the entire management team — which means that the front office should look outside of the organization for a solution. That would require a search sometime after the season ends, not a midseason correction.

Bullpen woes

It would probably surprise most Cubs fans that this bullpen ranks in the exact middle of the pack by WAR. The Cubs are the 15th best bullpen as of today putting up 1.2 fWAR through May 21. Their 4.50 ERA and 3.85 FIP so far this season indicates that they’ve been a bit unlucky with their results. What would probably not surprise anyone is that most of the bad luck appears to have manifested in May.

Since the calendar turned, the Cubs bullpen has put up a 5.24 ERA off a 4.22 FIP. They are both unlucky and worse than they were in April. The Cubs have an MLB worst 62.5 percent strand rate in May — which goes a long way to explaining some of those heartbreaking losses this month.

However, this isn’t a management problem. It’s a personnel problem. No one in the bullpen has been immune from the damage. The last reliever standing who had been mostly unscathed during this time period, Adbert Alzolay, took it on the chin in Philadelphia surrendering a two-run home run to Bryson Stott late on a day where the Cubs struggled to score until Christopher Morel hit a long home run with the Cubs down two outs.

The Cubs intended to use Boxberger and Fulmer at the end of games and, to be frank, that has not worked out. We are watching them try to figure out real-time who their high leverage guys are. That process is going to be painful, especially when the guys who look like they might have a shot at success (Alzolay, Thompson, Leiter) blow saves and hold opportunities as they did on this road trip.

In other words, Green or someone else, would likely push the same buttons in the same order that Ross is — to the tune of the same results.

RISP

Stats about production with runners in scoring position have alway struck me as being driven more than a little bit by luck. The part that is not driven by luck can be found in lineup construction, and honestly, Ross has done most of the things I would want him to do there already — they just haven’t worked yet.

Eric Hosmer has been DFA’d and his playing time has gone to Matt Mervis and Trey Mancini. Both of whom have had good moments and bad moments. Christopher Morel has played every day while he’s been on a fairly historic hot streak, but he needs some assistance from other players. Patrick Wisdom has cooled off considerably after a hot start, Nico Hoerner and Cody Bellinger cooled off a bit too, before finding themselves on the injured list. Just take a look at Cubs hitters with at least 20 plate appearances in May and it’s easy to see the team is just not performing offensively the same way they did in April:

And now a look at how the Cubs have done in May with runners in scoring position:

These leaderboards are pretty similar. I mean, if we really want to quibble with performance here it looks like Happ and Bellinger have struggled a bit this month with runners in scoring position — and precisely no one thinks that moving Happ or Bellinger down in the order is the answer for the Cubs offensive woes.

Baseball is hard. You stack your best guys where you think they can do the most damage and hope. The big changes — stop bunting late, why is Hosmer in instead of Mervis, why is Morel in Iowa, etc., have already been made. Now it’s on the players to step up and put that talent together in the form of wins.

The silver lining

Even if you don’t love every decision David Ross is making, the internal options to replace him aren’t that much better. And no, the fact that Joe Girardi is in the Marquee Sports Network booth a few times a month doesn’t mean he’s waiting in the wings to swipe the manager’s mantle from Ross. It’s worth remembering that he got axed in Philadelphia last year, sparking an almost immediate turnaround. The odds that he could come into a team built to succeed under Ross & Co. and right the ship somehow seem infinitesimally small to me.

This team is not the 2023 Oakland Athletics, but there probably isn’t some hidden 95+ win team lurking inside ready to take a weak NL Central by storm, either. It’s a collection of solid veterans, young intriguing talent, improved, but flawed starting pitching and a bullpen that desperately needs three or four guys to step up into high leverage roles. There will be moments that look bleak while fans wait for those things to happen — and moments that look brilliant when they do. Those are the ingredients for a .500 ball club, just like pretty much every projection system predicted at the start of the season — and just like pretty much every projection system continues to predict now. Those projection systems probably wouldn’t change all that much with someone other than Ross at the helm.