CLEVELAND — For the second consecutive night, a sacrifice fly produced the Chicago Cubs’ only run.
The dismal production again didn’t give them much of a chance in Wednesday’s 6-1 loss to the Cleveland Guardians, who have the best record in baseball. While the Cubs held their own over the last three days, they need to find ways to beat good teams.
The Cubs (59-63) were swept in a series of at least three games for the first time this season despite holding a lead in each game against the Guardians. Coming into the series, the Cubs were 41-18 when scoring first. This marked the first such sweep since the devastating three-game sweep in Atlanta last September.
“I mean, it’s disappointing,” manager Craig Counsell said. “I thought we played two pretty good games the first two days. Today, offensively we didn’t do a good job. We didn’t do enough. And that’s disappointing.
“That is a good baseball team for sure. They’ve got as good a record as anybody in baseball right now, but getting swept is no good.”
The Cubs have tried to maintain perspective with 40 games to go. But the task in front of them only gets harder as the number of remaining games continues to dwindle.
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Complicating their efforts to move up the National League wild-card standings is the lack of a tiebreaker advantage over the teams they are chasing. The Cubs, who were six games out of the last wild-card spot through Wednesday, don’t hold the tiebreaker against any of the teams ahead of them for that spot: the Atlanta Braves (2-4), New York Mets (3-4), San Francisco Giants (3-4), Cincinnati Reds (3-7) and St. Louis Cardinals (6-7).
Coming into the series in Cleveland, the Cubs had a 9.4% chance of making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. Those odds dropped to 3.8% after the sweep. They haven’t been .500 since June 5 or above that mark since May 28.
“I mean, .500 is a nice number to be above. It means you’re winning more than you’re losing,” said right-hander Jameson Taillon, who allowed four runs in six innings Wednesday. “But all that matters is where you’re at in the standings and who’s in front of you. We were definitely at one point pretty far under it, and we’re clawing back and I feel like that’s a sign that we’ve been playing a lot better baseball.
“But lost three, now we have to punch back, and it feels like that’s kind of been the story of the season. So hopefully we can punch back and not turn these three into something bigger.”
That’s part of what makes the Cubs’ current position so frustrating. The organization can point to how they played in April when they were seven games over .500, but that has become the anomaly rather than their performance over the last 3½ months. They’re running out of time to change that.
“It doesn’t really matter where we’re at, like, we have to give the same effort every single day and everyone has to do their job,” Taillon said. “So I’m aware of where we are and who’s in front of us and what that means and the urgency. But I feel like most of us show up every day trying to get better, trying to prepare, trying to win a ballgame, urgent regardless of where we’re at.
“So, yeah, it’s time to make some noise and just play our best ball.”