Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- An NL Central team is showing concerning defensive splits despite leading baseball in fielding metrics this season.
- Their pitching staff is allowing some of the hardest-hit balls in the league, creating a mismatch that could worsen soon.
- The current losing streak may be a warning sign that forces a deadline decision on bolstering the rotation.
In a deviation from the usual mode, we are not going to walk through every single reason the Chicago Cubs could possibly be struggling right now and decide which one should receive the gold star. I’m just going to come out and tell you: They’re giving up too much loud contact.
The Cubs have lost eight of their last 10 games and four straight to the Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee Brewers, a stretch that cannot feel good to any North Sider who cares about beating teams in their city or their division. The Cubs have surrendered 7.75 runs per game during their current losing streak, much of it because of loud, damaging contact from home runs or multiple-RBI events.
The Brewers used the extra-base hit to expose the Cubs
Despite the Brew Crew being one of the paragons of MLB’s “bunting boom” (something I think is wildly overblown), it’s the loud cracks of the bat that Chicago needs to avoid right now. Against the White Sox, they gave up five home runs in one of their losses and a walk-off home run in the other. Against the Brewers, Shota Imanaga gave up eight earned runs on two singles, a double and two homers. In short, they’re getting slugged on, but a closer look at the underlying data paints an even darker picture. And it’s one I’m fairly concerned about going forward.
Chicago has surrendered the fourth-most home runs but only the 13th-most earned runs total in 2026. That’s a curious aberration, but one that is easily explained by the Cubs being the best defensive team in baseball — leading the Majors in outs above average, fielding run value, you name it. And that makes plenty of sense itself; Pete Crow-Armstrong and Ian Happ are as good as you’re going to get in the outfield, and Alex Bregman and Nico Hoerner add two more Gold Gloves to anchor the infield. It’s no wonder opposing teams score a lot of their runs via long balls.
Chicago's underlying batted-ball metrics show a team about to get killed by home runs
Looking at standard statistics, it doesn’t look like the Cubs are getting killed by slugging. But expected metrics imply they’ve dodged more than a few bullets in that department, and their opponents are producing high-quality contact at a concerning rate. But these are complex formulas, and complex formulas don’t play baseball!
What isn’t overly complex is how hard their opponents are hitting the baseball, which is, to be frank, really hard. Cubs pitchers are giving up the fourth-most barrels (perfectly hit balls), the fourth-worst hard-hit rate and the second-worst average exit velocity. The batted-ball profile of your opponents is a very predictive set of metrics, and sorting by them sees the Cubs sitting on the struggle bus with teams well below their level. But it hasn’t hurt them in the way that it probably should have … yet.
My broad concern is that giving up such quality contact so consistently will eventually lead to more runs, perhaps even more than a sterling defense can correct for. I would not be surprised if the Cubs are aggressive in trading for pitching help at the deadline, given this smells a bit like a home run factory waiting to happen. It’s not time to panic … yet, because Chicago still has major defensive chops mixed with an undoubtedly talented roster that’s seen streaks of success. But it’s also not chill to keep giving up this kind of batted ball; this losing streak may be some foreshocks, and eventually, it’s going to hurt for real.
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