The Pressure Shows Up Early
The Cubs went 20-3 after a 7-9 start, then went 7-20 over their next 27 games. In that stretch, they averaged 3.26 runs per game and scored just seven runs across 29 innings in a series loss to the Giants.
"I've been terrible," Bregman said after Sunday's extra-innings loss. "I need to play better. Offensively, it's been awful. I've failed many times in this game. I've struggled. When you're struggling, there is only one way forward and that's straight, head-on through it."
The matchup already has enough history; the job is to keep the reading list shorter than the tension.
Bregman is hitting.243/.327/.342 with a 95 OPS+, but the eye test has been worse than the numbers suggest. His hard-hit percentage dropped from over 44% last season to 39% this year. The situational hitting, as he acknowledged, has been the main issue.
Sunday night, with runners on first and third in a 1-1 game in the eighth inning, Bregman hit a 68 mph liner to first base that turned into a double play. Any ball to the outfield would have given the Cubs the lead.
With runners on base, Bregman is hitting.208/.297/.238. With runners in scoring position, he's at.173/.250/.187. With two outs and runners in scoring position, he's down to.100/.206/.133.
The Detail That Tilts It
It's not only him. The Cubs have left the bases loaded in innings with zero runs scored 24 times. No other team has done that more than 14 times. They rank fifth in on-base percentage but can't bring runners home.
Bregman leads the majors with 143 men left on base. Ian Happ is third with 138. Seiya Suzuki is seventh with 126.
"I need to be better with runners on base, plain and simple," Bregman said. "They brought me here to play good baseball, and I haven't played good baseball. I need to figure it out."
He does. The five-year, $175 million deal he signed this past offseason means more of the spotlight falls on him, even when the whole team is struggling. The Cubs are only a half-game out of a playoff spot, thanks to those two 10-game winning streaks. If they claw back in, the situational hitting will need to improve markedly. Bregman coming through more often would be a good start.