2024 Cubs Heroes and Goats: Game 54

Heavy sigh. For seven innings, this felt like it was going to be an homage to vintage Justin Steele. Without any question, he’s my first star of this game. He threw seven strong innings, allowing only three hits and a walk while striking eight. Unfortunately, the end of the game necessitates that the story of this game isn’t the very strong outing of Steele. That said, you should probably take this performance as the key one out of this game. If the Cubs can get Steele going and hopefully keep Shōta Imanaga going, the Cubs are going to win a lot of games. Two very good starters with three capable starters will keep you competitive in enough games to stack an awful lot of wins.

As I move on, I’m going to circle back on that last point. The Cubs lose 5-1 and that sounds uncompetitive. But if the Cubs had gotten any offense at all going over the first eight innings yesterday, the whole complexion of the game changes. Unfortunately, the easy impression of this game is the continued ineptitude of the Cubs offense along with a rough inning out of the bullpen.

I don’t think there is a lot of question that the significant needs of the Cubs involve one impact bat and one impact arm for the bullpen. The team is good. The organization is good. I do think it is a fair and reasonable impression that the largest amount of improvement will come from within. The forward progress of internal options is going to eventually make or break this organization as a future championship contender. However, as that development occurs, they can significantly benefit from the presence of truly elite talent.

I would draw a parallel to the Cubs starting rotation, That’s where they have Shōta Imanaga as both a model of excellence but also someone to take pressure off of the rest of them. With players like Dansby Swanson and Hector Neris, it feels like the Cubs have guys who the players look to for leadership. So the team has several ingredients of a very good team. They don’t have that guy in the lineup that strikes fear into opposing pitchers. They don’t have that presence at the end of the game that feels like game over. In 2016 terms, the Cubs are missing their Kris Bryant and Aroldis Chapman.

The fun part of using those bookmarks for ingredients that you would want to add is that in 2016, that team didn’t have Chapman yet at this point. That type of piece can be added in season. Adding a Bryant level bat can be prohibitively expensive. And, very much like the actual Bryant, there are no guarantees that any player, regardless of pedigree, can sustain their excellence over the course of a career.

This is the peril of financial restraint. I respect fiscal responsibility. Not having fiscal discipline can lead to getting yourself into a position where it can take years to straighten out bad decision making. That said, in recent years we’ve seen the Cubs put themselves into the bidding on some big ticket players, but ultimately peel off when the price got too rich, It seems like maybe Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani were players like that. In past years, Bryce Harper was one of those.

Other teams are valuing those truly elite, prime of their career players than the Cubs are. And so the Cubs are left empty handed over and over again. You can certainly win with just ordinary stars. Not every championship player has a future Hall of Fame player on it. Or even a guy like Bryant who if he sustained his productivity over another 5-10 years would be in the conversation. But it’s just a lot harder without a player like that, Ideally, multiple of those guys.

For now though, the Cubs have a talented group that feels two or three players short of being an upper tier team. But also, two or three players is a lot. If all things continue to progress, last year will have been the year where things turned for this franchise. Where the team started to emerge from a rebuild and a contention window started to open. They fumbled away their first playoff opportunity and had the double indignity of watching the team that got past the Cubs rolled all of the way to the World Series. Will year two of this window also find them just a little short? It’s certainly not hard to see that outcome in the range of possibilities.

Three positives? As I said above, Justin Steele very obviously to me was the big story of this game, particularly from a positive standpoint.

Cody Bellinger gets the second position for me. He was the only Cub with multiple hits and there were no Cubs with extra base hits. So that’s the second spot.

The only other Cub who reached base more than once was Seiya Suzuki. He had a hit and a walk and ended up scoring the end of game consolation run.

Game 54, May 27: Brewers 5, Cubs 1 (27-27)

Fangraphs

Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.

THREE HEROES:

• Superhero: Justin Steele (.450). 7 IP, 25 batters, 3 H, BB, 8 K, HBP

*6th largest WPA game score of the year for the Cubs.

• Hero: Cody Bellinger (.065). 2-4
• Sidekick: Seiya Suzuki (.010). 1-3, BB, R

THREE GOATS:

• Billy Goat: Mark Leiter Jr. (-.299). ⅓ IP, 4 batters, H, BB, 3 R, 2 ER, K (L 1-3)
• Goat: Christopher Morel (-.159). 0-4
• Kid: Patrick Wisdom (-.133). 0-3, SF, RBI

WPA Play of the Game: With runners on first and second with no outs in the eighth, Leiter got a ground ball off of the bat of William Contreras to third base. This seemed like a possible around the horn double play, particularly with a catcher running. At minimum, they’d get at least one out. But Nick Madrigal misplayed the ball, a run scored and the flood gates opened. (.175)

*Cubs Play of the Game: With a runner on first and no outs in the seventh inning, Cody Bellinger batted. The game was still scoreless. He singled and the Cubs had two on with no outs. (.086)

Yesterday’s Winner: With basically one choice, Ian Happ received 118 out of 120 votes. Believe me, I prefer the games where I can give you five or six good options.

Rizzo Award Cumulative Standings: (Top 5/Bottom 5)

The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.

• Shōta Imanaga +15
• Ben Brown +11
• Javier Assad +10.5
• Jameson Taillon +9
• Mark Leiter Jr. +7
• Matt Mervis -6
• Christopher Morel -7
• Miguel Amaya -8
• Adbert Alzolay -10
• Kyle Hendricks -20

*Leiter drops to fifth, Morel drops to fourth to last.

Up Next: Game two of the series. The Cubs start Ben Brown (1-1, 3.20, 39⅓ IP) and the Brewers start Freddy Peralta (3-3, 3.81, 56⅔ IP). Brown has been terrific other than that first outing when he was making his major league debut. Hopefully, he can put an end to this skid.