The Chicago Cubs look good. It doesn’t take an analytics expert or savvy veteran scout’s eye to see that this team is cooking, at least offensively.
As things sit right now, the Cubs rate at the top or near the top in nearly every offensive category, with the exception of batting average. As of this writing, they lead major league baseball in RBIs, stolen bases, walks, and total bases.
The New Chicago Cubs Offense
When one crunches the numbers even further– as Randy Holt of North Side Baseball recently did– the numbers look even more impressive.
Per Holt:
“Nobody in the league has scored more runs than these Cubs, whose 94 sit well ahead of the second-place New York Yankees (78). They also feature the league’s fourth-best strikeout rate (19.3%), best walk rate (13.0%), and are running the ninth-best ISO (.170). Yes, the Cubs have a couple of extra games on their line, but it’s not as if they were stuffing the sheet with those two games in Tokyo.
Perhaps most notable, though, is the fact that they’ve also stolen 25 bags, which leads the league. Better still, they’ve only been caught once. Boston hasn’t been caught yet, and each of the Giants and Angels have been caught once, as well, but those three teams have combined for 34 steals.”
The Cubs offense has been a whirlwind of movement and big play possibility, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what their sluggish and perpetually half-step-behind offense looked like for most of the 2024 campaign.
Patience Is A Virtue
The anchor for the team’s revitalized offense has been patience, the art of knowing when to go for “it” and when it’s more wise not to.
Jordan Bastian of MLB.com crunched his own numbers to showcase that new Cubs trait, especially at the plate.
Per Bastian:
“Entering Wednesday’s action, that collective mindset had the Cubs sitting with a Major League-high 13.0% walk rate. Looking further under the hood, Chicago’s offense had swung at just 29.7% of pitches outside the strike zone, ranking fifth best in MLB. On the other side, the Cubs’ 69.2% rate of swings on in-zone pitches was 11th best in baseball.”
Long gone are the post World Series days of Javier Baez swatting at wild, way-outside sliders and antsy Cubs batters, swinging for 5-run home runs every time at the plate.
In their place are these pesky and smartly-aggressive 2025 pests, who are giving opposing pitchers headaches.
“That’s kind of the identity that we hope to create to kind of go along with the baserunning,” Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly told MLB.com. “[Our message] was, ‘Hey, we’re going to be really aggressive in the zone and be super stubborn out of the zone.’ That’s kind of how I phrased it to them.”
Cubs manager Craig Counsell co-signs Kelly’s goals.
“I don’t know if we’re going to be a top-two team in walks, as we are right now, but I do think it’s the patience to make a pitcher work and to bring him to what we want to hit, is something we have the ability to do,” Counsell told reporters.
Drought-Proof
When you add in the legitimate long ball threat represented by most in the lineup, what you get is a formula for success.
You get a multi-tool offensive beast that is nearly drought-proof because production relies almost entirely on factors that Cubs batters, themselves, can control.
If this remains the pattern and the path, through the bouncier-ball warmer weather later in the season, 2025 should be really fun.
Cubs-Kyle Tucker contract rumor from MLB Insider surfaces
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