Craig Counsell still won't learn his lesson after costing Cubs another win

Stop me if you've heard this one before: The Chicago Cubs lost a baseball game on Thursday afternoon, and their offense was almost entirely to blame.

Matthew Boyd delivered seven strong innings of two-run ball against the Toronto Blue Jays, an effort that that should rightfully have resulted in an easy win. But that's just not how things are going for this Cubs team right now: Chicago could muster only one solo homer off of Max Scherzer, and while they had the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on second with nobody out in the top of the eighth, all three of Ian Happ, Kyle Tucker and Carson Kelly proceeded to strike out to end the threat. Final score: Toronto 2, Cubs 1, their hold on the top Wild Card spot in the NL now down to just half a game.

This is the way the entire second half has gone for Chicago. They're now just 11-13 since the All-Star break, with a team OPS that ranked 23rd in baseball entering play on Thursday. This is no longer just a funk; this has been a crisis for weeks now, one that has already cost the Cubs their shot at the NL Central and now threatens to derail the entire season.

And yet, through it all, Craig Counsell has refused to panic. He's refused to do ... well, much of anything, really. Chicago's well-compensated skipper has insisted that this was just a regular old slump, that it would inevitably pass, that eventually the Cubs' talent would win out and all would be right again. Never mind that guys like Tucker and Happ have been ice cold for weeks if not months; they're Chicago's best hitters, and so they've been slotted into the heart of the order day after day.

So it was Tucker and Happ who were up with the game on the line on Thursday, and once again they failed to deliver. Counsell can't take at-bats for his team, and at a certain point the players have to be responsible for not hitting. But it's the job of a manager, especially one who's making as much money as Counsell is, to put his team in the best position to succeed. He's simply not doing that right now, and the more he insists on business as usual, the worse things get.

For more news and rumors, check out MLB Insider Robert Murray’s work on The Baseball Insiders podcast, subscribe to The Moonshot, our weekly MLB newsletter, and join the discord to get the inside scoop during the MLB season.

Craig Counsell is managing the team he wants, not the team he has

Someone who didn't get a chance with the game on the line? Rookie third baseman Matt Shaw, just about the only Cubs regular who's been swinging the bat well of late. But despite his eight homers and 1.100 OPS since the break, Shaw has remained chained to the bottom third of Chicago's lineup. He was batting ninth on Thursday, the only starter to record only three, rather than four, plate appearances.

That wound up looming awfully large, considering that Shaw was on deck when Dansby Swanson struck out to end the game. And considering that he had one of just two extra-base hits for Chicago on the day, a double to lead off the eighth (he was eventually the one stranded on third by Happ, Tucker and Kelly).

At a certain point, Counsell needs to understand that a little bit of urgency, a little bit of overreaction, might actually be a good thing. No one's saying that Tucker needs to be hitting eighth on a regular basis, but it wouldn't kill Counsell to manage the team he actually has rather than the one he expected to have (or maybe had back in May). This has been dragging on for a while now; at what point does a funk become just who you are?

You can understand why Counsell might be hesitant to rock the boat or offend some of his biggest and most important names. And ultimately, the Cubs aren't getting where they want to go unless Tucker et al snap out of this and start playing to their potential. But Counsell could help his team weather this storm rather than getting them stuck in it.