(670 The Score) Their hitters are optimized for baseball in 2015, their top starting pitchers throw like it's 2002 and those facts have conspired to leave the Cubs sputtering so far in 2021.
Even having bounced off their lows, the Cubs are batting an MLB-worst .192 through 15 games and have a second-worst overall contact percentage of 71.3. Their utter inability to hit fastballs has allowed opposing pitchers to gain a clear upper hand, staying out of their swing paths with hard stuff higher in the zone and largely on the inner half of the plate. It's a big reason why the Cubs have been hit a league-high 14 times, another being the lack of negative consequences for allowing them a baserunner: They're 14-for-102 with runners in scoring position, at the bottom of baseball in that situational average (.137), on-base percentage (.230) and OPS (.533). Not getting them on and not getting them in is bold strategy, indeed.
Then-Cubs executive Theo Epstein may have been correct when he observed in 2019 that "launch angle is not a fad," but even he may have underestimated how swiftly pitchers would adjust to barrels looking to sweep low strikes up and out. The technology boom of just the last five seasons has accelerated the successful pursuit of higher heat, regularly tunneled with a slower or tightly spun alternative from the identical release point. The Cubs' strikeout rate of 28.2% is 28th of the 30 teams, as they're too often victimized by those exploiting a former skill-now-turned weakness by high-speed cameras and tracking devices that have revolutionized the science of pitch design.
It wasn't supposed to be this way, not after the Cubs' multimillion-dollar investment in expanding their hitting infrastructure with new staff and resources, racing to make up for the lost time caused by what Epstein called the "winner's trap" of assuming what was working always would, while competitors outflanked them.
The Cubs did the same on the pitching side, too, but ended up going against prevailing trends there as well. Velocity and spin are the dominant forces in the game now, with all-time highs in average fastball speeds, the number of pitchers averaging 95 mph or more and the total percentage of pitches thrown at or above that. The rate at which the ball is thrown is the coin of the modern realm, even as it saps the sport of much of its entertainment value.
And the Cubs' coffers, alas, are mostly empty in that regard. Kyle Hendricks' average fastball is at 86.8 mph, about a full point lower than his already modest career level. The two-seamer of Zach Davies is at 87.9, Jake Arrieta's is a career-low 91.9, Trevor Williams averages 91.9 and even relative fireballer Adbert Alzolay's 93.6 is lower than his career rate of 94.3.
You want to dump Yu Darvish's salary just because you'd rather not spend money? You end up here, with a 0.3 total WAR among starters that ranks 27th in MLB, a 5.91 ERA that's 28th, a 4.70 xFIP that's 28th and a strikeout rate of 7.33/9 that's next-to-last. A soft-tossing staff has little margin for error, so there's also a premium on converting batted balls into outs. So it's not good news for the run prevention efforts when the team's Defensive Runs Saved is also an MLB-worst at -14.
Invoke and apply all reasonable caveats or mitigating factors to the observations herein, as yes -- it's early. Variance is your friend when the numbers are currently not, but much of this we saw coming.
The offensive woes have been ongoing for this core of players unable to adapt to changing times, and the pitchers are generating whatever force their bodies allow. It's not really their fault that they are who they are, left to stand out as anachronisms relative to their peers.
For years the Cubs organization embraced timelessness and nostalgia as a key part of their brand, and now the actual baseball operation is seemingly following suit.
Dan Bernstein is the co-host of the Bernstein & Rahimi Show on middays from 9 a.m. until noon on 670 The Score. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.