Alex Bregman just told everyone what they were already thinking.
After going 0-for-5 in a 2-1 loss to the Giants on Sunday night, with the Cubs’ offense going silent and Bregman making the final out of the game, the Chicago slugger didn’t dodge the topic. He owned it.
“I’ve been god-awful,” Bregman said about his performance with runners in scoring position. “I’ve been terrible. I need to play better. Offensively, it’s been awful.”
You can respect the honesty. You also have to look at the numbers.
Bregman is sitting on a .669 OPS, which would be the worst offensive season of his career by a wide margin. With runners in scoring position, he is batting just .173. And he is the cleanup hitter. For a Cubs team that wants to chase down the Brewers in the NL Central, that production is a problem the size of Lake Michigan.
The $175 million contract Chicago handed him in January looked like the headline move of the offseason. Five months in, it looks like a question mark.
To his credit, Bregman isn’t hiding behind excuses. He’s not blaming Wrigley, not blaming the league shift, not blaming the schedule. He’s saying the words “terrible” and “awful” about his own bat. That is the kind of accountability that usually plays well in a clubhouse, especially in Chicago.
Cubs fans, of course, are not in a forgiving mood. The team has already lost 10 in a row at one point this season and is hovering around .500. The boos at Wrigley have been audible. Bregman acknowledged them and said the fans have every right to be frustrated.
Here is the case for optimism. Bregman’s career numbers say he will hit. His exit velocity hasn’t cratered. The walk-to-strikeout ratio is still respectable. Veterans of his caliber don’t usually stay this cold for an entire season. The bet on Bregman was about the next five years, not the first two months.
But the bet only pays off if he snaps out of this soon. The Cubs need cleanup production now, not in September. Every week Bregman spends in the low .200s is another week of lost ground in the standings.
Calling himself god-awful is a start. Hitting like himself again is what actually matters.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
