Do Cubs need more help? Wind keeps offense quiet in loss to San Francisco
This game felt like a return to 2024, when the cold, cruel winds off Lake Michigan stymied the Cubs offense and had Jed Hoyer griping about the weather.
The Cubs lost 3-1 to the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday, dropping their second straight home series. Their early-season obstacle course continues this weekend with a trip to face the New York Mets, the only NL team with a winning record the Cubs have yet to play.
“I think we're a team that's built to win in all conditions and that's something we really embraced as a group,” said Nico Hoerner, who had 2 doubles and scored the Cubs' only run. “We weren't able to do it today, but I think our mentality has definitely been no matter what the conditions are here, it's our advantage at Wrigley.”
The Cubs managed just 4 hits and 2 walks against the Giants and starting pitcher Robbie Ray. All of the Cubs' runners reached base with two outs until Carson Kelly singled to lead off the ninth inning. But he was quickly erased on a double play hit by Justin Turner.
Cubs starter Ben Brown walked just 2, but both led off innings and the runners came around to score.
“When the home run is a tough thing, getting the leadoff hitter on and creating some traffic early in an inning seems to be a pretty good recipe,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “That's how you've got to score. They did it and we couldn't do it.”
This was the sort of performance that begs the question: Do the Cubs have enough to make a serious playoff run?
Their two best pitchers are both sidelined — Justin Steele is out for the season recovering from elbow surgery, while Shota Imanaga will miss at least two weeks with a hamstring strain.
Turner was supposed to bring his clutch hitting to the mix. He did deliver during the ninth-inning rally on Tuesday but is now hitting .170 on the season. At the moment he looks like Eric Hosmer and Trey Mancini wrapped into one.
Hoyer, the Cubs president of baseball operations, was asked when the series began about the possibility of early-season trades.
“There are phone calls going on, teams calling around, seeing what's going on,” Hoyer said. “So I think for sure you make the phone calls, but I still look at it as these are the internal months, and we have to solve this internally.”
Maybe the internal solution will be giving top pitching prospect Cade Horton his first major-league start on Saturday against the Mets. The Cubs haven't announced the plan, but that news could arrive Thursday.
On the offensive side, will the Cubs wait for an injury to give hot-hitting Moises Ballesteros a chance? He was hitting .376 at Iowa heading into Wednesday's action.
Generally, the Cubs lineup is set. At some point, rookie Matt Shaw will probably return to play third base. And they'll surely give Turner more time to get acclimated to his new home.
Any trade for a starting pitcher will likely have to wait until July. So far, the Cubs' pitching depth has held up with veteran additions Matthew Boyd and Colin Rea throwing well, along with Chris Flexen becoming a nice reclamation project. They're still hoping to get Javier Assad healthy for the second half of the season.
Another question is whether Ryan Pressly is up to the task of closing big games and lasting a full season. He was generally pitching well until Tuesday's 9-run eruption by the Giants in the 11th inning.
Brown didn't exactly build off a promising previous start in Milwaukee. Against the Giants, he piled up 9 strikeouts, but he needed a career-high 103 pitches to finish five innings. He got a huge assist when Pete Crow-Armstrong threw out LaMonte Wade Jr. trying to score from second in the fourth inning. After Brown left the mound, the Giants loaded the bases with nobody out in the sixth, but didn't score, in part because of a 5-2-3 double play.
“Ultimately, I really liked where I was at in the fifth inning,” Brown said. “It's like, why did it take 100 pitches for me to get to where I wanted to be?”