Maybe we shouldn't be panicking about Seiya Suzuki's incredibly bad month?

The Chicago Cubs offense is down bad right now. Since posting their second ten-game winning streak on May 8, they've been among the worst teams in baseball not just with runners in scoring position, but with the bat in their hands, period. Before play on Wednesday, they were tied with the Colorado Rockies with a 76 wRC+ in that stretch for dead last in all of baseball. It's been a complete power outage, too. No team in the majors has been in the same zip code in terms of slugging percentage in that time, with their ghastly .304 mark a good 39 points below the 29th-ranked Padres.

As much frustration has been levied at Craig Counsell over this agonizing span, there's not much he can do when the guys who are paid to hit just aren't hitting. Frustration reached a boiling point in Tuesday night's game — a 2-1 snoozer against the Athletics that saw rookie Gage Jump mow their grass for seven innings on just 85 pitches. At one point, 17 straight Cubs were retired, 11 on three or fewer pitches. That's not good enough for a team with hopes of competing for a World Series this year, or even a fringe playoff contender.

They did have one chance to salvage the night, though, when Seiya Suzuki was up at the dish. He hit a foul ball just inches away from being a potential game-winner down the line, but instead, he flew out as the heart of the order went down with a whimper. It felt like another brutal moment not just for the team, but for a player who's been going through it arguably worse than any Cub with regular playing time. After May 8, he's slashed just .167/.213/.190 with a 16(!) wRC+ and has the third-highest strikeout rate on the team at 32.6 percent.

Suzuki is meant to be one of the Cubs' greatest overall power threats and one of their best hitters period. Last year, he finished second behind only Michael Busch on the team with 34 home runs. His status as part of what should've been a vaunted middle of the order with Busch, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Alex Bregman makes his deep struggles all the more painful. Yet, this is just a slightly prolonged version of what the Japanese slugger has been throughout his entire Cubs career.

It bears repeating every time it happens that Suzuki goes through these down periods every year. In 2024, he was also snakebitten in May, posting a .219/.275/.329 slash line with a 71 wRC+. Looking at specific 22-game stretches, 2025 also featured a nightmarish run from early July into August, in which he slashed just .177/.293/.253. Granted, this most recent span is provably the worst of his career, but not by a lot! In 2022 and 2023, he had similar down periods in which he posted OPS numbers of .437 and .454, respectively, only marginally better than his .404 OPS of late.

Seiya Suzuki always rates out as one of the Cubs' best hitters

I'm not going to tell you that this process isn't immensely frustrating to watch year after year, especially at a time when the rest of the lineup is dead. However, Suzuki has shown time and again that the patience is often worthwhile. From 2023 through 2025, his 129 wRC+ is good for 24th in all of baseball, rating him as a better overall offensive force than hitters like Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, and Fernando Tatis Jr. in that time and not far behind superstars like Jose Ramirez and Cal Raleigh. Each valley is often accompanied by scorching-hot stretches during which he can carry the team.

Suzuki's already shown one good sign, at least. On Wednesday night, amid another dreadful loss, he unleashed a monster home run off Jeffrey Springs, his first since the final game of the ten-game winning streak, May 8. The overall numbers under the hood aren't encouraging right now, between career lows in barrel percentage (8.1 percent), average exit velocity (88.8 MPH), and hard-hit percentage (41.1 percent), but that's nothing a heater couldn't help fix. The biggest challenge for him will be improving against breaking balls and offspeed pitches, both of which he's currently slashing under .200 against and slugging under .300.

Yes, this offense has major problems right now, and Suzuki is part of that. Yet, there are other hitters far more worthy of concern right now.

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