Down Bad, Brown Good, Bullpen and the Offense, and Other Cubs Bullets ...Middle East

Oof. That game. It didn’t break me, but, whew, it certainly pushes a guy up against the limit of what he can believe is possible. There will be lots to discuss. I’ll get to the Dansby Swanson thing in a moment. And the Mike Soroka news and discussion is here if you missed it. The short version is that he’s going on the IL with a shoulder issue, the extent of which is unknown.

As for the rest …

Taking Soroka’s place in the game last night, and perhaps in the rotation the next time through, Ben Brown was brilliant in his four innings of work last night: Four innings, five strikeouts, no walks, two flukey hits and a flukey run allowed, and a 36% CSW. He even got two whiffs on the three changeups he threw. Maybe just give Ben Brown an opener every time and let him cook? By and large the bullpen group pitched really well again, too. Hopefully they can keep that up, especially right now. “Everybody pitched very well,” Counsell said, per The Athletic. “Ben Brown did a heckuva job. He had bad luck on the run he gave up. He gave us a chance to win. The bullpen pitched well. We just didn’t hit. Simple as that. We had three hits. Not going to win many games with three hits.” The offense is in a bad place, amigos. Outside of the 10-run outburst in Milwaukee for the one win there, the Cubs have not topped 6 runs in a game in nearly FOUR WEEKS. When you think about what drove this team to so much early-season success, that’s pretty concerning. It feels pretty fortunate that the Cubs are 10-9 over that stretch (and that the All-Star break happened during the stretch to reduce the number of games played, I guess … ). The starting pitching rightly gets a lot of the focus, but I keep coming back to the weird relationship between the offense and the bullpen, because we saw it so much earlier this season. When the offense is really clicking and keeps adding on in games, the boost to the bullpen is so significant – they don’t have to be perfect. They don’t have to rely on the same three guys in every game. So whatever happens with the starting pitching – which you can also keep to shorter outings if the offense is humming – the bullpen is in such a better place overall when the Cubs are winning games by five runs every now and again. Speaking of the bullpen group, Chris Flexen, who was DFA’d last week after some struggles, has been released. I presume the Cubs will let him find a minor league deal elsewhere rather than bring him right back because of the Soroka injury, right? (Per the MLBTR report, Flexen rejected an outright assignment from the Cubs – he gets his full $1.5 million salary either way – so he will probably be trying to find a big league opportunity elsewhere.) And speaking of Cubs pitching depth heading elsewhere, Kenta Maeda opted out of his minor league deal with the Cubs at the end of July, and has now signed a new minor league deal with the Yankees. Spencer Turnbull effectively took Maeda’s place as the “veteran extra depth or maybe bounce-back at Iowa” guy. Miguel Amaya was back at Wrigley Field yesterday for a check-in, I assume, and hopefully he’s getting close to a return:

Pic I took of Miguel Amaya who just got dropped off at Wrigley Field. Got a chance to talk with him for a minute….he said he was just visiting the boys today, that he had few more days of rehab.I was so happy to see him@bleedcubbieblue @crawlyscubs @BleacherNation pic.twitter.com/bwEraWOKeB

— Sam Bernero (@sambernero) August 4, 2025

Miguel Amaya was playing catch at Wrigley Field today pic.twitter.com/n6GRqvc93W

— Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) August 4, 2025 Amaya has been playing at Triple-A Iowa as he comes back from his oblique injury. The Cubs could use the offensive boost.

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