Alex Bregman stretched his hitting streak to 10 games Saturday night in St. Louis, but the Cubs still had not gotten the kind of power they wanted from their cleanup hitter. He lined a single to right in the second inning against the Cardinals after a near homer was wiped out on review, a small hit that kept the streak moving even as the bigger concern remained his lack of thump.
Bregman entered play with a nine-game run in which he was 12-for-38 and batting.316, and he had hit safely in 14 of his last 16 games. The contact has been there. The extra bases have not. He has just two home runs in his last 218 at-bats over 54 games, matching the two he hit against the Nationals on March 29 and leaving him with fewer home runs by the end of May than at any other point in his career.
That gap matters for Chicago because Craig Counsell moved Bregman into the cleanup spot last Sunday and expected more than singles from the middle of the order. Bregman had not driven in a run in six games while batting fourth, and he finished May with six RBI. For the season, he had 17 RBI, eighth on the Cubs, and four home runs, seventh on the club.
The problem was not limited to one bat. Seiya Suzuki had only two home runs and a.292 slugging percentage in 26 games in May, Kyle Tucker entered Saturday without a home run in his last 20 games, and Ian Happ had his own burst of production after a long stretch of strikeouts. The Cubs were 8-2 when they hit a three-run homer, but they got only one walk in Friday’s 6-5 loss after drawing 13 in the previous two games. Counsell said the middle of the order has to supply extra-base production, and right now Bregman and the rest of it are still trying to deliver.
What comes next is simple enough: the Cubs will keep watching whether the hits around Bregman start turning back into home runs and RBI, because the streak is helpful only if the cleanup spot starts producing like one.
