The season somehow got even worse with some help from Chip Caray

The Cubs' can't hit, but at least we got a ton of Father's Day awkwardness from Chip

Sure, the Cubs are bad, but at least there’s Shōta to root for. Until July 1, you can get 18% off a subscription for a year just because of Shōta. Too bad he’s not wearing number 80, isn’t it?

The St. Louis Cardinals are not a good team. They don’t hit well, their starting pitching is wildly inconsistent, their bullpen is fine and they have a bunch of bearded fat guys running around on the field. With the weekend’s festivities wrapped up, one thing is very clear. The Cubs are not as good as that not good team. They are 1-4 now against St. Louis, and it says much more about the Cubs struggles than any Cardinals resurgence.

The only win was Shōta’s excellent start on Saturday, and it really made you wonder again why the Cubs completely skipped his turn in the first Cardinals’ series when he was slated to start the opener but it was rained out.

The Cardinals play a lot of one-run games. They are 11-9 in them, and their closer, Ryan Helsley has 24 saves in their 35 wins. They aren’t beating teams by very much.

The Cubs play even more one-run games. They are 13-16 in them. Their win 5-1 win on Saturday was the first time they won a game by more than three runs since May 15.

In fact, since May 15, they have only won two games (Saturday included) by more than two runs!

Nobody’s really hitting. Marquee was making a big deal out of how Ian Happ had turned his season around, but when he hit a right handed homer in Saturday (something rarer than the solar eclipse we had this spring) it was his third hit in 32 at bats! That, apparently, qualifies as red hot on that team.

Nico Hoerner is playing with a broken bone in his right hand, and it shows. At the plate, since Hunter Greene hit him that hand with a pitch on June 7, Nico is 2-for-19 (.105). He also couldn’t get anything on a throw when he tried to turn a ninth inning double play yesterday. Granted, the speedy Masyn Winn was running so it might not have mattered, but the throw was so pathetic it looked like Nick Madrigal had returned. Clearly, Nico didn’t need an IL stint. Great job, Cubs.

As for his double play partner, whatever mojo he got from pulling down his pants has dribbled all the way down his leg. Dansby Swanson is three for his last 21 (.143).

Michael Busch has started to hit again. He’s hitting .333 over his last seven games and .314 over his last 15. But not for power (.371 slug) and not in a way that contributes to runs (two scored and one driven in, in June.)

As you would expect, a team that can't assemble a decent lineup probably doesn’t have much of a bench, and if you ever needed an obvious example, you got one in the seventh inning yesterday.

Down 2-1, the Cubs had runners at first and second with two outs and Miguel Amaya coming to the plate and a full bench. Seems like a no-brainer decision to pinch hit, right?

Right?

Craig Counsell’s options were:

• His only lefty bat was Petecrow Armstrong, hitting .207. Counsell decided to hold him in case a pinch running situation came up later (and it did.)

• Patrick Wisdom, the Cubs best pinch hitter (2-for-11 in that spot with a homer, five RBI and a .903 OPS).

• David Bote, the guy who once hit a pinch-hit walkoff grand slam to erase a 3-0 deficit with two outs in the ninth inning, only six years ago!

• Yan Gomes. Ugh.

Counsell didn’t go to any of them. He let Amaya hit and Miguel came through with a…just kidding, he grounded out to short.

So, why didn’t Counsell hit for his .190 hitting catcher?

I guess he didn’t want to burn two players in that spot, which is what he’d have had to do if he hit for Amaya there. If Petecrow hits then he either stays in the game to play the outfield and Yan Gomes comes in to catch, or Petecrow is done for the day, which means Gomes is now batting in whatever outfielder’s spot that Petecrow replaces, either Mike Tauchman (batting leadoff), Cody Bellinger (third) or Happ (fifth).

If he went with Wisdom or Bote then the same issue occurs. Though, I don’t know why you’d care that much if you burned either of them. If they stayed in, then Yan would either hit second (Morel) or seventh (Busch, who as we said, is kind of hitting these days), Bote could have replaced Nico, too, I guess.

In the end, Craiggers decided the difference between Amaya already in the game, or the pinch hitter wasn’t enough to make a move.

Wisdom ended up getting to hit in the exact same situation in the ninth and he flew out to the warning track for the second time in three days.

So basically, this is Yan Gomes’ fault. If he weren’t the least productive hitter in the National League (current OPS+: 19) you wouldn’t be that hesitant to put your second catcher in the game with the likelihood that he might get an important at bat before the game was over.

The reality is that it probably doesn’t matter.

This is really a helluva roster Jed has built.

Speaking of Amaya, he nearly had an infield hit in the third when he dribbled one to shallow shortstop and Brandon Crawford came in, bobbled it, bobbled it again and still threw him out. At this point, the only thing preventing Miguel from being thrown out on a grounder to the left fielder is that he rarely hits the ball all the way to the outfield.

If you were a Cubs fan before 2005 then you knew what you were in for yesterday when the Cubs and Cardinals were selected for the prestigious Roku Sunday Game of the Week with Chip Caray doing play-by-play.

If you weren’t, well, now you know.

Chip tormented Cubs fans for seven seasons between 1998 and 2004, blabbering on, talking endlessly about the banal, getting every big play wrong and making life miserable for viewers even in the rare seasons when the Cubs weren’t terrible. The one saving grace of the large contingent of choking assholes on that ‘04 team is that they hated Chip, too and they made life miserable for him, so he left to go call Barves games after the season.

Two years ago the Cardinals hired him to return to the home of his youth, and some Cardinals fans thought they were really sticking it to Cubs’ fans by “stealing” their old announcer. They learned quickly enough that they were the ones getting the sticking.

Because it was Father’s Day, the Roku telecast (very obviously produced by the whizzes at Marquee Sports Network) really made a big deal of the nostalgia that should come with a third generation big league broadcaster. They showed clips of Chip and his dad Skip, and his grandfather Harry.

And most viewers probably thought it was cute. But those of us who know, know.

Jim Deshaies was doing the color commentary and he’s used to working with a guy who never shuts up, but on more than one occasion he set Chip up to tell a story about his grandfather, the most celebrated Cubs’ announcer of all time, and Chip didn’t, because he doesn’t have any.

Well, he does have one, and I so wanted him to tell it. The one where he was a kid playing little league in St. Louis and he was at a tournament and there was a buzz because Harry had come, and everyone assumed it was to see Chip, but in reality Harry didn’t even know Chip was there. Harry was just there because the son of the broad he was with was playing for another team.

The most telling/awkward moment was when the broadcast zoomed in on the caricature of Harry and Chip wondered aloud if Harry was in heaven or hell.

Chip was closer to his dad, but not that close. There was a reason he grew up in St. Louis when his dad was doing 150 games a year for the Barves. Skip had divorced Chip’s mom early on in Chip’s life and they didn’t live in the same state. Now, that’s not unique to Chip, but it does shoot a big hole in things when the broadcast is trying to get the announcer to talk at length about what it was like growing up with two famous big league broadcasters in his family.

Late in Harry’s life he felt compelled to make up for lost time with Chip, but on Harry’s terms. Before the 1997 season, WGN needed to hire a play by play guy to work the games that Harry was no longer doing after his stroke, and Harry wanted them to hire Chip. They hired Josh Lewin instead, and according to Lewin, Harry was pissed and stayed pissed at the Cubs, and at him, for the entire season. Lewin left after that one season and this time the Cubs hired Chip, and then Harry died, and we were stuck with full seasons of a guy the Cubs never wanted to hire in the first place.

One fun moment was Chip giving us all a history lesson about the park he worked at for seven years by repeating the same story we’ve heard 10,000 times about how no player has ever hit the center field scoreboard. While he didn’t follow it up with his grandpa’s favorite proviso, that no “baseball” player had ever done it, because Sam Snead once hit it with a golf ball, he did credit former WGN producer Arne Harris with an anecdote that Roberto Clemente once whizzed one out of the park in center between the bottom of the scoreboard and the bleachers. Deshaies said he’s never seen any one hit the ball into that little section of bleachers, and Chip agreed.

Hey, Sam. The scoreboard’s over there.

It’s not like Chip was the announcer when Sammy Sosa was at his ‘roided up best.

Why, if you listen closely to this SportsCenter highlight of Sammy hitting one to the top of that section of bleachers in 2000 against the D’bags, you might just recognize the Cubs’ announcer.

Huh.

Anyway, hey Chip, thanks for the memories. Maybe we can do this again in 2042?