It's not Happ-ening

But we're sure David Ross will figure something out, right?

It's not Happ-ening

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One of the tortures of being a Cubs fan these days is having to watch game after game on Marquee Sports Network. You have to give them credit, though, it’s impressive to be bad at as many things as they are.

One of the worst parts of their broadcast is how much pre-planned, banal chatter there is, and it tends to be at its very worst when they decide they need to shoehorn Taylor McGregor into things.

When it becomes really glaring, is when something truly impressive happens and they either barely mention it, or they just ignore it altogether.

We had a startling example of that last night.

Christopher Morel homered to lead off the game.

A couple of innings later, the Marquee graphics person put up an awkwardly worded, but still impressive fact. Morel is the first Cub since at least 1901 to lead off at least five games for the Cubs and homer in every one of them.

Boog and Joe Girardi clearly didn’t read the graphic, and they didn’t bother to discuss it.

But think about what it actually says.

Christopher Morel has led off five times this season.

May 12 and 14 versus the Twins, May 15 and 17 against the Astros and last night against the Mets. In those five games he has eight hits and eight RBI and five homers. One homer in every single game.

And…nothing.

Is it little more than a statistical oddity? Sure. Do they talk about much more boring and inconsequential things all the time? You’re damned right they do.

A couple innings later after another awkward live read of a terrible Cubs’ fan Tweet (or X, or whatever) Boog said, “Oh, we have inside jokes.”

That might be all you have.

And then, in the seventh inning of a two run game they talked about the wave. For a very long time.

So, that they could spontaneously riff on?

Having Morel lead off was a very David Ross thing. It “worked” in that he homered, but the wrong thing will work on occasion and it doesn’t change it to the right thing.

Ross continues to bat Ian Happ third, which is bad enough when he’s batting left handed, but it’s completely inexcusable when he’s hitting right handed like he was with Mets’ lefty David Peterson starting.

Happ should be hitting seventh (but that’s where Ross is batting his second best hitter, Jeimer Candelario for…reasons, I guess?), but on a night when you have the great Mike Tauchman on the bench, shouldn’t you just have Happ lead off? The only thing he does well these days, especially right handed, is walk, so if he did while batting first, it might be useful.

Happ’s season batting average is only seven points worse than his career average. That would be fine if his career average wasn’t .248. But it is.

Hey, I’m as big of a “batting average is a flawed stat” as anybody. So let’s look at Happ’s OPS. It’s .772, which is 24 points worse than his career.

His slugging is down 47 points to .405.

But his on base is up twenty-four points to .367. There’s just no reason to keep parking him in the middle of the lineup.

Ross is getting credit for taking Seiya out of the lineup because it’s time to be “ruthless.” And if that’s the case, why isn’t he being ruthless with Happ? He doesn’t have to bench him (though, I wouldn’t be opposed to a little of that), just stop making Cody Bellinger stand in the on deck circle while Ian does nothing.