Bouncing Back
Are the Cubs streaky? Was the May slide an aberration?
“We never have baseball figured out.”
Asked about Dansby Swanson’s surge at the plate, that was Cubs manager Craig Counsell’s response. Swanson posted a .448 OPS in May and had fans calling for him to be benched. Counsell moved him to the bottom of the order and did give him a couple of days off, but there was no other real remedy besides continuing to take his at-bats and hope things would change.
Behind the scenes, Swanson was working hard on fixing what was going wrong, but ultimately there’s only so much that can be done. Like Robert Frost said in his 1915 poem “A Servant to Servants,” sometimes the best way out of a problem is through it.
In the last 10 games, Swanson has driven in 26 runs. He homered three times — including a grand slam — against the Padres on Wednesday. His recent stretch has him in company with Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mel Ott, and Jimmie Foxx. Only those four players have driven in more runs in a 10-game stretch in baseball history.
Counsell summed it up as best he could:
“He probably went through the roughest patch of his career, and on the other side of it is the best stretch of his career. You figure it out.”
Baseball is a puzzle. Swanson himself reacted similarly to his recent success. He knows the work he’s done to improve, but ultimately how or why things have taken such a dramatic turn is a little bit of a mystery even to him.
I think Swanson is a microcosm of the 2026 Cubs. They went 19-12 in the first month of the season and started May by rattling off their second 10-game winning streak. Then the bottom fell out. The Cubs went on a 7-22 stretch and sunk to .500. But as I write this, they’re 11 games above .500 and 17-10 since the start of June.
Are they streaky? Was the slide down the standings in May an aberration?
The frustrating answer is that we don’t know yet. My opinion is that it all hinges on the offense. The pitching has been consistent, even if not particularly good. If anything, they should be commended for maintaining a respectable level of performance despite a host of injuries to the pitching staff.
The difference is the lineup. Through May 11, the Cubs offense ranked highest in baseball. During the aforementioned cold stretch, they dropped to 19th. Since June 11, when things seem to have taken a turn for the positive, they’re back to the top of the league.
Why they got so collectively cold and whether or not that happens again will determine if this team is really just streaky or if they’re going to have had just one bad stretch. Force me to answer, and I’d say that their funk back in May was an extreme, and even when/if the offense cools down, it won’t be as bad as it was then.
That’s the hope for Cubs fans, at least. The 2026 team came into the season with high expectations because of last year’s success and the additions they made during the offseason. For a while it looked like they might suffer a similar fate as the 1985 or 2004 ballclubs, but I’m optimistic that this year’s group will reach the playoffs.
Things I’ve Done Lately:
Linked above as well, but my story from Wrigley after Wednesday’s series sweep over San Diego.
The White Sox are having a good time of their own: I wrote about the 7 walk-offs from 7 different players.
Pete Crow-Armstrong has been thriving at the top of the order, but he might not stay there for good.
What I’m Digging Right Now:
David Coggins has written lists like this before, but he added a few more rules for modern life. I’m especially in favor of this one: “Leisure doesn’t have to be self-improving.”
I finished watching “Tales from ‘85” — the spinoff Stranger Things series on Netflix — with my daughter, and it’s solid. Feels like old-school Saturday morning cartoons while supplementing the main Stranger Things storyline nicely.
One of my son’s friends organized a summer stickball league. He’s running the whole thing on his own; he made shirts, has organized the schedule, established rules, kept stats at each game, and he’s working on an All-Star game. The best part is, it’s all 12-year-old boys doing it on their own. No adult involvement. I’ve gone to pick up my son from a couple of the games and watching these guys feels like pure Americana.