The Chicago Cubs won last night’s game on a walk-off, though did so without the benefit of a hit with a runner in scoring position on the walk-off, itself. Instead, Matt Shaw walked. A good outcome! But still, strictly speaking, not a hit.
The lone hit in the entire game with a runner in scoring position, in fact, came just before, with Pedro Ramirez singling to tie the game. Also good! But, you know, “lone hit.” The nine times previous with a runner in scoring position? No hits. For the game, the Cubs left a whopping 15 runners on base.
It’s a story you’ve heard in one form or another almost all season, with the Cubs capable of putting a decent number of runners on base, and then failing repeatedly to bring those runners home. Even in a win, that story is not going away.
Hence, Ian Happ was asked about it on The Score, and you could almost sense the frustration – not with the question, necessarily, but with the idea that the Cubs could possibly keep on failing at the rate they have been. It would SEEM to be implausible:
Ian Happ on Cubs offense: "Just the law of averages, guys, it has to turn. I'm telling ya. It's not possible for us to go an entire season with the lack of runners in scoring position success that we've had. There's such a thing called regression to the mean, and that's coming." pic.twitter.com/OMh3a9GuPo
— 104.3 The Score (@thescorechicago) June 16, 2026Although I don’t intend to take any of this literally, and I’m mostly having fun here, Happ’s comments did get me curious. How bad COULD a team be with runners in scoring position over a full season? Especially knowing that teams generally hit much better in those situations, all else equal?
Even more to the point, because I think this is what Happ is actually saying: how bad could an otherwise decent offensive team be with runners in scoring position over a full season? It’s one thing if a terrible team that is terrible in all situations is also terrible with runners in scoring position. But does regression to the mean more or less require, over a sample the size of a season, that an average or decent-hitting team will also eventually hit average or decently with runners in scoring position?
Well, before I answer those questions, let me set up some background info. The Cubs offense hasn’t been bad all year, and their season-long numbers in various splits aren’t nearly as remarkable as the period Happ and The Score hosts were referencing. This is really about how bad things have been during the VERY DARK AND BAD times.
Things really started to go bad for the Cubs – the offense, in particular – on May 9. That’s when the whole mess of series losses started, anyway. Since that date, the Cubs have hit .217/.307/.355/89 wRC+ overall as a team. That’s quite bad, but the reason it has felt EVEN WORSE is because of the splits: with the bases empty, the Cubs have hit .239/.327/.401/108 wRC+ (second best in baseball! woot woot!); with runners in scoring position, the Cubs have hit .220/.326/.351/91 wRC+ (eighth worst in baseball by wRC+, second worst batting average! womp womp!). That’s a pretty substantial difference between the two scenarios, and in the opposite direction you typically expect. So, yes, it has been VERY noticeable how bad the Cubs have been with runners in scoring position over the past month and a half. Hence it coming up more or less nightly.
But let’s get back to Happ’s comments. Will things straighten out, purely by good old fashion regression? Obviously we can’t say something like that DEFINITIVELY since it’s a probabilistic future thing by nature, and I have no looking glass, but we might be able to dismiss the claim if we could find a similar team doing that kind of thing over a full season.
I gotta tell you, I thought I was going to have to search really deep and wide to find something like this. Or maybe I was just hoping.
I did not have to search far and wide to find a team example to throw some cold water on Happ’s theory. I had to go back a whopping two years.
The 2024 Tampa Bay Rays weren’t a great team overall, though they were generally competitive, ultimately finishing just under .500 (80-82). They had a below-average offense overall, but only by 5% by wRC+. This was not a terrible offensive team.
It was, however, a terrible team in one very specific offensive situation, and you already know what it is.
Although they were almost league average hitters with the bases empty, that Rays club hit an abysmal .212/.297/.335/83 wRC+ with runners in scoring position. Not over a month and a half. Over a FULL SEASON. They had a 15-point wRC+ difference with the bases empty and with runners in scoring position, pretty close to the 17-point difference the Cubs sport during this dreadful stretch. The 20-point difference in their batting average is actually a point higher than the Cubs’ difference during this dreadful stretch. And, again, the Rays managed this feat over a full season.
Now, then, you could probably comfort yourself by sizing up the 2024 Rays offense and deciding the 2026 Cubs’ group is simply a better set of players, and therefore they are more likely to positively regress. I will probably try to do that myself, because I don’t particularly want to start imagining the Cubs doing this RISP crap for another three and a half months.
Buuuuut if you actually look at those 2024 Rays, well, they had eight different hitters with an above-average slash line (min. 100 PAs) that season, and five of them were had a 113 wRC+ or higher. You know how many 2026 Cubs currently fit in each of those buckets? Yup: the very same eight and five, respectively.
So. Gulp?
Let me say in Ian Happ’s defense that what the 2024 Rays “accomplished” was probably exceedingly rare, and I probably just happened upon it quickly and easily because I started in 2025 and worked backwards. It was never LIKELY that those Rays would do what they did, just as it isn’t LIKELY that the 2026 Cubs will continue to do what they’ve done over the last month and a half. Happ is absolutely correct in that respect.
The rub is that it’s baseball, and SOME low-probability things happen ever year. You just have to hope that your set of low-probability events are fun things like cycles and team walk-offs, rather than profound underperformance with runners in scoring position.
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