Cubs' Wild Card collapse opens door for Jed Hoyer to revisit painfully familiar narrative

When Jed Hoyer meets with reporters in the coming days to address what went right and the many things that wrong this season for the Chicago Cubs, it feels like the stage is set for him to lean on a familiar trope. Dating back to the days of Theo Epstein, there's been a stretch each season where it appeared the offense broke.

Epstein was willing to admit that in 2018, but the Cubs have yet to identify the reason why. This season has been no different. While the Cubs had one of the best offenses in baseball, and most metrics suggest that, the argument is that the numbers were somewhat skewed, considering Pete Crow-Armstrong's MVP campaign.

What's ignored in the overall metrics is that this is an offense that broke in May, and when it mattered most. The more troubling news is that signs of an offense regression were hiding in plain sight during the second-half of the season.

Jed Hoyer has familiar Cubs response waiting after offense goes silent in Wild Card sweep

Since July 30, the Cubs have a 14-game losing streak in games where they did not hit a home run. Despite Hoyer constructing a roster that wasn't meant to rely on home runs, the Cubs became a boom-or-bust offense for the final two months of the regular season.

It doesn't stop there. Throughout the season, the Cubs have had their struggles with runners in scoring position. Some that can be chalked up to the randomness of a baseball season, but when coupled with the feast-or-famine nature the Cubs operated with to close out the season, it's beginning to feel like an organizational failure.

Before Nico Hoerner's RBI on Wednesday night, driving in the only run the Cubs scored the entire Wild Card series against the Padres, the Cubs were 2-for-66 with runners in scoring position over their last eight games.

As a whole, during the Wild Card series, the Cubs were 8-for-62, and compiled an OPS+ of 7. As much as Cubs fans hate to hear, by every sense of the saying, the Cubs' offense broke.

One thing Hoyer can't say is that the struggles were merely a bad stretch. If it happens once, like it did last October, sure. But when it has happened multiple times since then, that's not a bad stretch. That's a problem that continues to surface at the worst possible time. Until that problem is embraced, and the Cubs are determined to reshape their roster construction, we will be at this place every October.

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