The Cubs have a left-handed problem.
No, not in the bullpen (though they could use another lefty there even with Kyle Ryan's emergence).
The Cubs' issue is that their Kryptonite this year has been left-handed pitching. Considering they were one of the better teams against southpaws a year ago, this has been an unsettling development for their hopes of getting the offense on track consistently.
That changed for one day, at least, with one big swing of the bat from Anthony Rizzo Friday — a two-out grand slam in the third inning off San Diego southpaw Eric Lauer in a sloppy game the Cubs won 6-5.
But in general, facing lefties has been a major issue for this lineup.
"We've been terrible. we have to be better," manager Joe Maddon said. "We have guys that are really good against lefties that haven't shown that yet. of course, Albert [Almora Jr.] and [Addison Russell] and [David] Bote — those are the three guys, if they get back to their normal methods against lefties, that's really gonna help us a lot.
"That's the one element — talking about the offensive side of things — I really think for us, we have to get better vs. the lefty."
MLB
Entering play Friday, the Cubs ranked 28th in Major League Baseball in runs scored off left-handed pitchers and 29th in batting average (.234). They rank 15th in OPS vs. southpaws this season, but that mark — .752 — is actually better than they posted last year (.730) when they hit .260 against lefties.
On the one hand, the Cubs have not faced left-handed pitchers much — only one other team (Detroit Tigers) has faced southpaws less often than the Cubs this season.
On the other hand, the Cubs are trending in the wrong way against lefties.
Since June 1 (entering play Friday), here are the OPS of Cubs players with at least 10 plate appearances against southpaws:
Willson Contreras — 1.379
Kris Bryant — 1.376
Addison Russell — .821
Anthony Rizzo — .639
Javy Baez — .579
Albert Almora Jr. — .558
David Bote — .455
Kyle Schwarber — .389
Jason Heyward — .221
Yikes.
That's three guys who are above average offensively, and one of those guys — Contreras — is currently on the injured list.
It's encouraging for the Cubs that Russell has started to show more signs of life against lefties given his slow start in that regard and his typical solid production against them. But the other two Cubs lefty mashers — Almora and Bote — are way down at the bottom of that list.
All three players were in the lineup Friday — Almora leading off, Russell hitting fifth and Bote hitting seventh — and Almora kicked off the Cubs' scoring by reached on an infield hit with two outs a few batters before Rizzo's blast. But outside of that, the three Cubs combined to go 0-for-6 with 5 strikeouts against the left-handed Lauer.
Even with a positive result in Friday's game, the Cubs still need to figure it out more consistently against southpaws. If they have hopes of going deep into the playoffs, they're going to have to contend with a bunch of lefties along the way, especially with the Dodgers (Clayton Kershaw, Hyun-jin Ryu, Rich Hill, Julio Urias etc.).
Whether that means the Cubs need to add another hitter to combat LHP or not remains to be seen, but with the trade deadline less that two weeks away, we'll have our answer soon enough.