Column: Clues for the Chicago Cubs’ late-season collapse were right in front of our eyes all along

Even if the Chicago Cubs had made the postseason, most agreed their season would have ended in the wild-card round.

Expectations were higher than normal in early September, with a 3 1/2-game lead for a National League wild-card spot and the team on a roll with a 12-1-2 record in 15 series from July 17-Sept. 6.

No one was crazy enough to think this was a World Series-caliber team, but getting in would be good enough — a small step to spread a little optimism for 2024.

Then it all went wrong, spectacularly so, leading to a late-season collapse. The Cubs went 7-14 and were eliminated on the second-to-last day of the season.

“It’s hard to define exactly what went wrong,” Cubs President Jed Hoyer said Tuesday before pointing to the fatigue factor, bullpen injuries, lack of clutch hitting and defensive miscues.

Those were all valid factors in the slow-motion demise, but what Hoyer forgot to mention was roster construction.

That would’ve meant throwing himself — and many of his players — under the bus. Perhaps if Eric Hosmer and Trey Mancini had performed well enough to avoid being released, if Jameson Taillon pitched better and Drew Smyly were signed as a reliever instead of a starter, if Brad Boxberger could be trusted in high-leverage situations, if the end-of-the-season bench wasn’t populated by unproven rookies in Pete Crow-Armstrong, Alexander Canario and Jared Young, things might have been different.

But that’s baseball. You can always point to something and quite often many things when looking for blame for a team’s downfall.

Hoyer promised to “put it under a microscope” to find out what went wrong, but there’s no need to do that.

Here are seven clues that were right in front of our eyes all along.

1. The team-created narrative during spring training revolved around the championship rings the Cubs had in the clubhouse.

In a fiery address to his team in February, manager David Ross pointed out they had 14 first-rounders, 10 Gold Glove winners, 10 All-Stars, 10 World Series champions, three Silver Sluggers, two Rookies of the Year, an ERA title winner, a Most Valuable Player winner, an All-Star Game MVP and an NLCS MVP.

“But that don’t mean (bleep) coming into this season,” he said.

That might have been the most prescient thing Ross said all year.

None of that mattered when the season was on the line. Having a World Series ring or making an All-Star appearance is nice, but it doesn’t make you immune from underperforming under pressure.

“We just seem defeated at times,” Marcus Stroman said Sept. 28 after the Atlanta Braves completed a three-game sweep .

A team with so many rings should never seem defeated, especially in a race for a playoff spot. The Cubs went 5-11 from Sept. 11 in Colorado through Sept. 29 in Milwaukee. Four of those wins were against the Rockies, the worst team in the National League, and the other was against the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates.

2. The Cubs guessed wrong on too many veteran players.

They were obviously right in signing Cody Bellinger, the team’s MVP, to a one-year deal, and on letting Willson Contreras leave as a free agent. Catcher Yan Gomes, who went from Contreras’s backup in 2022 to starter, was a key part of the Cubs’ resurgence after being 10 games under .500 on June 8.

Dansby Swanson’s great first half was noticeably absent in the second half, when he hit .225 with a .306 OBP. At least Swanson “owned” his disappointing finish. Taillon recovered somewhat and did his job in his final start in Atlanta but couldn’t be counted on for much of the season. He needs to show more consistency in 2024 to avoid being a bust. Stroman, a first half All-Star, never recovered from his injuries and should’ve called it a season instead of rejoining the rotation the final week.

3. The Cubs bullpen finished 13th with a 3.85 ERA but didn’t prove to be reliable down the stretch.

Relievers went 5-9 in September with a 3.56 ERA and a league-leading 10 blown saves, and their 60 walks tied for fourth-worst. When injuries to Michael Fulmer and Adbert Alzolay challenged the late-inning “pockets,” Ross often turned to José Cuas, who posted a 5.73 ERA in 15 September appearances, and rookie Daniel Palencia (4.85 ERA in 11 appearances) with games on the line.

After usually dependable Mark Leiter Jr. missed a week with an undisclosed injury, Ross threw him into a must-win game, starting the ninth inning with a one-run lead against the Braves on Sept. 27. Leiter served up a tying home run to Marcell Ozuna on a 3-0 pitch, and the Cubs wound up losing in 10 innings. The Cubs had an average bullpen that had a good stretch but eventually tired out.

4. Swanson and Christopher Morel, two of the biggest pieces of the lineup, could not get on track after the All-Star break.

Morel had the season’s signature moment — the walk-off home run against the White Sox on Aug. 16 — but hit .231 with a 32% strikeout rate in the second half, 10th-worst among qualified hitters. In his final 21 games from Sept. 7-30, Swanson hit .238 with a .721 OPS.

The Cubs went 7-14 in that stretch. Swanson’s defense was Gold Glove-caliber for the most part, but so was Jason Heyward’s during his long stay in Chicago. Not a bad season, but the Cubs need more from their seven-year, $177 million investment.

5. Bad bounces factor into any game, but one particularly bad bounce in Arizona proved extremely costly to the Cubs.

A liner deflected off Hayden Wesneski and into the air in the 13th inning of a Cubs-Diamondbacks game. If Swanson had tried to catch it on the fly instead of letting it bounce, the Cubs would’ve sealed a 6-5 win.

Instead, the tying run scored on an infield hit, the Diamondbacks won 7-6 in 13 innings and the Cubs wound up getting swept in the four-game series.

“In hindsight, if I could have come in and tried to dive and caught it, that probably would’ve been the best move,” Swanson said.

That would’ve been the most painful loss of the season — until Seiya Suzuki missed a two-out fly ball that led to two eighth-inning runs in a 7-6 loss in Atlanta on Sept. 26. The Cubs wasted a six-run lead and ace Justin Steele was removed in the sixth after 90 pitches.

The Cubs talked about their resiliency all during the second half but couldn’t rebound from either devastating loss.

7. A couple reportedly held a wedding ceremony the left–field bleachers at Wrigley Field on Sept. 7.

The Cubs lost 6-2 to the Diamondbacks but were still in the second wild-card spot, three games ahead of Arizona and 3 1/2 ahead of the Miami Marlins.

That was the unofficial start of a Cubs collapse that had something old, something new, something borrowed and a whole lot of blues.

Hopefully the lucky couple had a nice honeymoon.

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