It’s only May, but don’t just take my word for it.
“It’s only May,” Cubs left fielder Ian Happ said during the just-completed homestand from hell.
“It’s May,” shortstop Dansby Swanson said.
“I mean, it’s May,” catcher Carson Kelly said, with a detectable note of added emphasis.
Wouldn’t you know it? It’s only May.
“It’s May,” manager Craig Counsell confirmed.
And what does that mean, other than that it happens not to be some other month, year or time continuum?
The Cubs would have us believe it means it’s far too soon to panic just because they lately can’t hit, can’t pitch and can’t pull themselves out of a gut-roiling spiral, their losing streak now at eight after an 8-5 loss to the Astros on Sunday at Wrigley Field.
An 0-6 homestand, though, the Cubs’ first one of those since 2021? Getting drubbed by a football-blowout combined score of 34-12 in those games? Trying to make sense of the longest losing streak by a Cubs team since a 10-gamer in 2022?
The expression “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” comes to mind.
Not to the Cubs’ minds, though, apparently. The clubhouse was a morgue at the end of the latest bad day at the office, but the self-flagellation was modest and the outlook not all that bleak.
“In the world of competition, there’s a fine line [between winning and losing],” losing pitcher Shota Imanaga said via a translator after getting his fine line handed to him in the form of three Astros home runs.
How can the same team win 10 games in a row twice, pile up 15 straight wins at Wrigley — the Cubs’ longest home streak in 91 years — and then lay a pile of extra-large eggs against the White Sox, Brewers and Astros, all in the space of a little over a month?
“Over the course of a long year, there are times when it’s like, ‘Oh, they scored two? We’re going to score three,’ ” Kelly said. “There are times it feels like that, and then there are moments when we bear down almost too much. Everybody wants to be the guy to do it. I think if we just stick to what we do and do your job, not make the moment bigger than it needs to be, that’s what’s going to help us get back on track.”
The Cubs (29-24) are still 18-11 at the Friendly Confines. So they’ve got that going for them, which is almost kind of nice if you can trick yourself into forgetting the order in which things have happened.
If they can rediscover the art of playing baseball in Pittsburgh and St. Louis, they could even salvage what has been a month of extremes. The Cubs were 8-0 to start May. Now they’re 10-12. Who’s ready for another hot streak?
“This game comes down to execution,” third baseman Alex Bregman said. “If we out-execute the other team, we’ll win. If we don’t, we’ll lose. So we’ve just got to do a better job of it.”
When a team as beatable as the Astros (23-31) comes in and smacks the Cubs around like it’s a “Three Stooges” routine, anyone might have a hard time seeing solutions clearly.
“Losing isn’t fun,” first baseman Michael Busch said. “I think we’re feeling that.”
A happier kind of day appeared to be in the offing when the Cubs scored three runs in the second inning. It was just the way a professional rally ought to look, involving a walk and heady base running by designated hitter Moises Ballesteros, a sacrifice fly by center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, a two-out RBI knock by second baseman Nico Hoerner and, somewhere in there, the first hit and RBI of Pedro Ramirez’s career.
But then the Cubs went right back to not hitting, remaining stuck on five hits until Busch homered in the seventh. By then, the stench of defeat had already begun wafting back in.
A brutal week-plus it has been.
“There’s opportunity when things aren’t going well, and I think that’s how you have to approach it,” Counsell said. “Good things are going to come from this, and that makes me positive.”
Counsell gave multiple struggling hitters days off during the homestand, but there’s little evidence yet that it helped. If only the manager would be kind enough to extend a couple of days off to those who have to watch the Cubs play these days.
Slumps can be rough business, as Counsell well knows from his own playing days. Better not to get overly caught up in them, has been his advice.
“The results seesaw you otherwise,” he said. “That’s a dangerous way to have a daily existence.”
Besides, there’s a ton of season left. Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but it’s only May.
“As a group, we’re not really searching for how good we think we are,” Busch said. “I think we know how good we are.”
Seeing is believing, though, and it has been a while.
After winning 10 games in a row twice in a season for the first time in franchise history since 1935, the Cubs are close to joining a select group of teams in baseball history that have won and lost 10 games in a row in the same season.
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The Cubs called up Jordan Wicks from Triple-A Iowa, where he had a 4.44 ERA in seven starts, covering 26 ⅓ innings.
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“That’s the hard part,” Happ told the Sun-Times after the Cubs lost to the Astros 8-5 for their eighth consecutive defeat. “[It’s] really to focus on your process and your work and what you’re trying to accomplish.
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