SAN FRANCISCO — On the penultimate day of the Chicago Cubs’ 2023 season, when a loss in Milwaukee officially eliminated them from playoff contention, Jameson Taillon tried to look ahead to what the team could take away from finishing one game out of a wild-card berth.
Taillon hoped that playing meaningful games in September and digging out from 10 games under .500 could serve as a reminder that every pitch and every game matter in a long season.
But as the Cubs reached the midpoint of this season, dropping to seven games under .500 (37-44) with Wednesday’s 5-4 loss to the San Francisco Giants, they again sat in an unenviable position as July looms: last place in the National League Central, 11 games out of first place and five games behind the final wild-card spot.
“I understand there’s a lot of baseball left, but, yeah, I mean, we haven’t won enough,” Taillon told the Tribune on Wednesday. “We can talk about how our lineup’s full of names, good players, and our pitching staff has a lot of guys who have done it in the league for a long time. And none of that matters if you don’t win games, so that’s kind of where I’m at. We can talk about how we should be doing better or whatever, and the fact of the matter is we haven’t to this point.
“We still have a lot of season left to prove what we can do. Honestly not going to try to diagnose it. We just haven’t been good at all across the board, everybody, and we need to be better.”
Taillon remains confident the Cubs can be the team they envisioned entering the year. He pointed to the eventual returns of relievers Adbert Alzolay and Julian Merryweather to fortify the bullpen, the rotation continuing to throw strikes and keep them in games and hitters producing at the level they have in the past.
Taillon certainly isn’t alone in his continued belief despite the Cubs’ record and inconsistencies. Even as the losses have mounted, it has been a common refrain around the team as players, coaches and staff have tried to focus on turning the page after each game and looking ahead to the next day.
“We’re really focused on the now,” veteran pitcher Kyle Hendricks said. “Where we’re at, we have a sense of urgency. Yeah, you need it to happen sooner rather than later. We know that. That’s why we’re coming in with that attitude and work ethic every single day. So hopefully it turns real quickly for us and we can get on a good hot streak here.”
The Cubs’ performance over the last two months hasn’t warranted that level of hopefulness outside the organization, however. Familiar themes have emerged from last year, most notably the troubling position they have put themselves in again and the pressure it creates over the final three months to recover. Through 81 games in 2023, the Cubs were 38-43 and entering that pivotal upswing that turned their season around.
“I think we can play better, I think we will play better, but, yeah, we are in a very, very similar spot,” Taillon said. “And there’s a lot of reasons for optimism, but, again, we need to go out and do it. So I’ll be ready to contribute to that and watch it happen.”
This is not the direction the Cubs should be going after the moves the front office made the last two years. The roster, on paper at least, did not appear to be among the best in the majors coming into the season but should have had enough depth and experience to compete for the division title — or at the very least a wild card.
“Obviously not where we want to be from a record standpoint, but you try to take as many of the positives as you can and understand that there’s half a season left,” left fielder Ian Happ told the Tribune. “We’re very capable of playing great baseball in the second half, and the nice part is the league’s bunched up where there’s plenty of opportunity here, so to take that in stride.
“This time last year, we really turned it on and got ourselves into a great spot. We’re fully capable of doing that again.”
Wednesday’s game frustratingly played out as far too many have for the Cubs — costly miscues and hitters not seizing opportunities with runners on base. These close games have been the norm, and too often the Cubs have been on the wrong end.
Their 33 one-run games through Wednesday were the most in the majors, five more than the next-closest team (the Oakland Athletics), and their 19 one-run losses also topped MLB.
“It lets you know we can play with anybody,” Taillon said of the close games. “It’s missed opportunities, and when you play so many close games, it’s stressful. Every night it’s a frickin’ nail-biter. When you have close games, you either need to rely on the same dudes in the bullpen or you’ve got to trust other guys to get the job done, and it can become very, very stressful.
“That’s the situation we’ve put ourselves in and it affects a lot of things, so every matchup is going to be optimized in close games.”
A prime chance came in the third inning Wednesday with the Cubs trailing 3-1, but it was wasted after back-to-back singles by Nico Hoerner and Michael Busch. The Nos. 3-5 hitters — Cody Bellinger, Seiya Suzuki and Happ — went down on a strikeout, flyout and strikeout against Giants right-hander Hayden Birdsong, who was making his big-league debut.
Suzuki’s solo home run in the fifth, his first long ball since June 12, tied the score in the fifth.
But those good vibes didn’t even last the inning. Left-hander Drew Smyly surrendered a two-out homer to Luis Matos, which stood as the decisive runs.
“It’s not as simple as one dramatic speech or one thing that the offense focuses on,” Hoerner said. “It’s the consistency throughout an entire game of seizing the moments, and it feels like the big moments in the game just haven’t swung our way.
“I’m not one for predicting out at the beginning of the year, but definitely would not have expected us to be at this point and I expect us to be better moving forward. But obviously you have to do it.”
The Cubs have set themselves up to require a torrid pace over the final 81 games to get into playoff contention. And as they learned the hard way last season, being on the wrong side of tiebreakers adds another layer of difficulty.
With the Giants’ win Wednesday, they hold the season tiebreaker over the Cubs. Among NL teams currently in the wild-card mix, the San Diego Padres, Atlanta Braves and New York Mets also already possess the tiebreaker advantage over the Cubs.
The Cubs have opportunities to gain an edge against the other teams bunched in the wild-card race: the Cincinnati Reds (5-2 vs. Cubs this season, six games left), St. Louis Cardinals (4-1, eight left), Arizona Diamondbacks (1-2, three left), Pittsburgh Pirates (4-3, six left) and Washington Nationals (0-0, six left).
Taillon understands the high expectations from fans, especially in a big market, after he spent two years on the New York Yankees. Growing up a Houston Astros fan, he remembers getting mad with the team’s performance and riding the wave of highs and lows in a season. Taillon deleted X, formerly known as Twitter, from his phone a while back, so he hasn’t seen Cubs fans’ reactions on social media.
He gets their perspective, though, as the Cubs try to get back into the playoffs for the first time in a full season since 2018.
“People are allowed to feel how they want to feel, like, they probably should be upset,” Taillon said. “We haven’t been good enough, that’s the fact of the matter. That doesn’t mean we’re a bad team. It just means we haven’t satisfied them to this point, and that’s fine.”
