Cubs’ fatal flaw that will derail hot start to 2024 season

Interestingly enough, the answer varies for each hitter. Swanson has seen a heavy diet of sliders and is hitting just .200 against them. Hoerner is a mixed bag, with decent stats against the slider and poor ones against the sinker, but xWOBA says those should be reversed. And Morel is having nightmares about changeups every night, hitting just .111 with a 30% K rate.

And in particular, it seems like the higher the velocity, the worse the Cubs fare. In the seventh inning or later, when fireballing relievers are typically in the game, the Cubs have a .637 team OPS, tenth-worst in the league, Comparatively, they have the ninth-best OPS from innings one through six at .736.

The Cubs are in a bit of a slump as a team all-around right now, so perhaps it isn’t fair to judge on recent sample size, but it’s worth looking at the context of their most recent four games, three of which are losses and the fourth was a win where they were no-hit into the eighth inning. The Cubs have just five earned runs in those four games when facing right-handed pitching and have struck out 30 times in 30.2 innings, having seen almost every archetype pitcher you can think of.

Who would be realistic adds for the Cubs?

Having firmly established that Chicago needs help when facing righties, we can have some fun and start looking ahead to the trade deadline. One lefty bat might not be enough to turn this “fatal flaw” into a non-issue, but it could still go a long way, so let’s look across the rosters of non-contenders to find some trade candidates that might be able to mash some right-handed pitchers at Wrigley Field in August and September.

The Colorado Rockies signed Ryan McMahon to a long-term extension through 2027, but frankly, they might not be halfway decent by then. McMahon has an .895 OPS against righties and fills a potential need at third base if the Cubs are willing to move Morel around the diamond like they did a season ago.

But McMahon might be a bit of a pipe dream, so how about the Washington Nationals’ Jesse Winker? The Cubs are no strangers to dealing with the Nats at the deadline, having brought Jeimer Candelario over a season ago. Winker was almost out of the league after underperforming in his last two injury-riddled seasons but caught on with Washington this spring and is eating righties for lunch, with a .977 OPS in 72 plate appearances.

And if the Cubs get lucky and the Arizona Diamondbacks fall out of the playoff race by the deadline, they should be ringing the front offices in Phoenix every hour on the hour about Joc Pederson. His 2021 tenure with the Cubs wasn’t the most fun portion of his career, but he’s seen nothing but good times since, winning a World Series in Atlanta that same year then having success in both San Francisco and Arizona. Off to a great start again in 2024, Pederson would make a heck of a Cub the second time around.

There we go, Cubs fans. We turned a negative into a positive. Your team just needs to grab one of those three lefties at the deadline and it will be 2016 all over again on the North Side.