MIAMI — “Big game today” I said to Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell a couple of hours before Saturday’s affair with the Miami Marlins at LoanDepot Park.
“Big game?” Counsell asked.
Yes, the Cubs would get back to .500 with a win over the lowly Marlins. They had not been at .500 since June 5, a walk-off win over the lowest of the low, the Chicago White Sox. That’s why Saturday qualified as a “big” game, relatively speaking.
“Yeah, that’s an easy headline for you,” Counsell said. “An easy byline. The article will write itself, you know? A win is important. The last time we had a shot, Shota (Imanaga) was on the mound, in Cleveland. Write that too.”
You got it. With the newspaper business struggling, we’re always willing to take suggestions from avid readers. And who knows more about what’s newsworthy to fans than the manager of the Cubs?
The Cubs wound up cruising to a 14-2 victory, improving to 13-7 in August and 65-65 overall. A series win against the 46-83 Marlins isn’t going to generate headlines, but the Cubs aren’t going to apologize for doing what needs to be done.
Seiya Suzuki had two home runs, a triple and four RBIs, Pete Crow-Alexander followed his inside-the-park home run from Friday with a 437-foot upper-deck shot and three RBIs and Imanaga allowed two runs on four hits over seven innings to notch his 10th win.
After a season-high 14 runs on 17 hits, the Cubs have totaled 30 runs over the last three games and finally climbed back to .500 after being nine games under on July 3, keeping their faint National League wild-card hopes alive with 32 games remaining.
“Obviously you want to have these games all the time,” Suzuki said through his interpreter. “But that’s the difficult part of baseball.”
The resurgence of Miguel Amaya and the progress of Crow-Alexander have been significant factors, and Suzuki has begun to adjust to the DH role. Maybe it was no coincidence he broke out Saturday while returning to his old haunts in right field.
“I feel like it’s a lot easier to be involved when you’re playing the field,” he said. “You feel the momentum of the game. When you’re DHing, you might be in the cages. You just understand the feel a little more (playing right).”
Suzuki said he’ll do whatever Counsell asks and also understands that Crow-Armstrong in center means Cody Bellinger moves to right, which is a far superior defensive outfield than when he is playing.
Counsell isn’t being paid to make every player happy, and it’s no secret he was brought here at great expense to win in October, not just to get to .500 in late August.
Saturday’s win aside, this has been as frustrating a season as Cubs fans have experienced since 2019, the end of the Joe Maddon era that featured the conscious uncoupling between the manager and President Theo Epstein in the final weeks of a lost year.
Fortunately for Counsell and his players, most of the venom this season has been directed at President Jed Hoyer, the architect of this .500 club.
Some of it is deserved. The Cubs are under .500 overall in Hoyer’s four seasons at the helm, with no postseason appearances. This team was built to compete for a division title, and the ticket prices reflect as much.
But the Cubs are 10½ games behind the Milwaukee Brewers, a recurring theme the last four years. They finished 24 games out of first in 2021, 19 games back in ’22 and nine back last year, when they blew a wild-card spot in the final weeks under David Ross.
But how many really complained when Hoyer replaced Ross with Counsell? Not me. I wrote in November it was the right move, even though it was handled in the clumsiest way imaginable. Counsell had a proven track record with less talented teams in Milwaukee, so the move to the big-market Cubs seemed like a match made in heaven.
And who didn’t think re-signing Bellinger to a three-year deal in February with opt-outs in ‘24 and ‘25 was a huge win for Hoyer, who held his ground on a long-term deal? Before opening day, some idiot wrote “Hoyer’s TKO of uber-agent Scott Boras in the negotiations over Cody Bellinger’s return might be his ‘White Album,’ earning him the kind of accolades Epstein regularly received in 2015 when the Cubs’ original rebuild turned the corner.”
According to the internet, that idiot was me. Bellinger’s slugging has dropped, thanks to injuries and ineffectiveness. His .757 OPS entering Saturday ranked 61st after he finished 12th last year with an .881 OPS.
“Chicago got the comforts of a full Belli, so they’re going to have to loosen their belts to keep Bellinger,” Boras said in November at the general managers meetings in Arizona.
The Cubs have been surviving on a half-empty Belli in 2024, as evidenced by the team’s offensive regression. He’s not totally to blame, but much more was expected from their biggest star, and he has five weeks to make the best of a disappointing season.
While most of us didn’t think the ‘24 Cubs would be World Series-bound, a division title seemed like a realistic possibility with the starting pitching, defense and return of Bellinger. It never happened. Now with the pressure off, they’ve begun to look like that team many thought they would be.
“Look, we dug ourselves a pretty big hole from (.500),” Counsell said after the game. “Then it’s taken us a bit (to get back). This stretch in August we’ve played really consistent baseball, and that’s what got us there. It means that a lot of people are contributing.”
Games like Saturday’s blowout can’t mask the pain of this Cubs season, though it kept them alive for another day. And Counsell was right about one other thing:
The article did write itself.
