Chicago Cubs: Team’s recent slide aided by struggling depth

The recent 2-5 road trip for the Chicago Cubs was frustrating for several reasons. Some losses were close to being wins as a lot of pieces have been hot and cold.

Some Chicago Cubs fans may be a bit worried about how the team has performed this past week, and on the road in general. With Sunday night’s loss to the Dodgers, their road trip ended at 2-5, and they have not won a road series since May 19th. It ended with stranding two on and nobody out in the ninth in what looked like another possible 9th inning rally. It was all for not.

Outside their outburst against the Rockies last Wednesday, the offense has been struggling. Sure they faced some great pitching, and beating the Dodgers at home is hard, but it has seen some major rough patches the past several weeks. Overall on the season, the Cubs are one of the best offensive teams in baseball, but lately, the inconsistency has reared its ugly head. What is going on?

Looking at the position players right now, one thing seems obvious; the depth outside the central core is not producing right now. Depth is something the Cubs had working great for them the past several years and has proven to be an essential part of success. The main core of Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, and Willson Contreras cannot do everything, and it is harder to win when others are struggling.

Struggling depth

This is not to say every single person, not including those four are doing poorly. David Bote is doing well, Kyle Schwarber has been hitting lately, and Victor Caratini has had a very impressive start, but a lot of the others are struggling. We have already seen the Mark Zagunis experiment not work out, and Jim Adduci came and went fast. Here is a look at some key depth guys on the roster.

Chicago Cubs: Has the experiment officially failed?

Theo Epstein took a flyer on the former Rockies All-Star which made sense. He is only 33 and has a very good resume to his name. However, so far, the results have not been desired. Despite some hits early on and some good at-bats, Carlos Gonzalez is hitting just .214/.324/.393 in 10 games as a Cub.

One of the biggest problems is that the bat looks slow. He is not catching up to pitches he once crushed and not coming up with timely hits. This was an issue earlier this year when he was with the Indians, who let him go after 30 games with them. It is hard to see the struggles from a very likable guy who seems to be a great clubhouse presence. But, the results with the stick have to come.

Yeah, 10 games is a pretty small sample size, so it is hard for me to call it a complete failure just yet. However, the trend is not looking all that promising, and if it continues, he may be DFA’d when other reinforcements arrive.

Chicago Cubs: It has been a roller coaster for Albert Almora but glimmers of hope show.

Albert Almora Jr. is by no means the worst player on the Cubs. He has had spurts of productivity and still plays a fine centerfield. In fact, he is one homer shy of his career high, so he has had some better power strokes this year. However, the overall numbers are still not quite where we want them to be.

So far, he is at a .251/.294/.407 slash with eight homers, an 80 wRC+ and a 0.6 fWAR. Not terrible, not great, overall mediocre. Despite hitting a few more bombs than his usual pace, his groundball rate is at 55.8% which is a bit higher than his career 50.5% mark. The BABIP is around .270, so he is not getting the fortune he was getting in the first half last year where more of those grounders squeaked through. Lastly, his walk rate is right where it usually is, which is around 5%, so he is still not walking much at all.

Almora is a career .282/.320/.411 hitter in 397 games. He is not going to be an OBP machine and likely not a 20+ homer slugger. For the time being, he is pretty much a platoon player/late-inning defensive glove. It would be nice if Almora can make those good spurts he has had last a bit longer.

What makes the struggling depth even more frustrating is that there is currently no Ben Zobrist to aid the core. The Cubs miss him. Theo and Co. may need to do some more shifting soon.