TORONTO — The fissures of frustrations kept cracking during another disappointing night for the Chicago Cubs’ offense.
The normally stoic Kyle Tucker, hitting .200 in his last 18 games with just one home run since June 29, whipped his helmet down the dugout steps after grounding out with two runners on in the seventh inning against the Toronto Blue Jays.
Two batters later, Pete Crow-Armstrong, facing lefty Brendon Little, struck out to leave the bases loaded in a three-run game. Crow-Armstrong slammed his bat and helmet to the ground in what would be the Cubs’ final scoring chance.
Seiya Suzuki punctuated an 0-for-5 night by striking out to end the game, returning to the dugout to toss his batting gear toward his cubby as the Blue Jays celebrated handing the Cubs a 5-1 loss Tuesday at the Rogers Centre.
The Cubs (67-51) managed just four hits, though they produced seven walks against starter José Berríos and the Blue Jays bullpen. They again couldn’t convert in prime opportunities, however, going 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position and leaving 10 on base.
“To score either you’ve got to be sequential and get a bunch of guys in a row on or you’ve got to have the extra-base hit that kind of pushes guys in from first base or score yourself, and we obviously created the walks and created some rallies through that, and some traffic through that, and some pressure through that,” manager Craig Counsell said. “The next hit was missing.”
Too often the timely hitting has been absent from a Cubs lineup that, through the first three-plus months of the season, was the best offense in Major League Baseball. Now, after the Milwaukee Brewers’ 11th consecutive win Tuesday, the Cubs sit 7.5 games back of first place and match the San Diego Padres at the top of the National League wild-card spot.
Chicago Cubs’ Seiya Suzuki rolls out of the way of an inside pitch against the Toronto Blue Jays during the ninth inning in Toronto on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)
“I think at times, naturally, human instinct is everyone cares so much and cares so much about this team and wants to come through in all those moments that naturally that can cause a little bit of, whether it’s tight or the stress or whatever, and it’s all coming from a good place,” shortstop Dansby Swanson said.
“And sometimes you’ve just got to find a way to be able to relax and allow your natural ability, your God-given ability, to take over. We’ve got so many guys in here that are proven and that have been there and done that and have had a lot of success in this league, and sometimes you’ve just got to take a step back and trust in yourself.”
In his season debut, right-hander Javier Assad allowed four runs and eight hits in four innings. Ben Brown’s relief effort — one run in four innings — gave the Cubs a chance to chip away at the Blue Jays’ lead.
But the innings kept playing out similarly. An infield single by Swanson represented the Cubs’ lone hit through the first five innings. Michael Busch’s RBI single in the seventh prevented the Cubs from getting shut out.
Assad and Brown each worked around a Swanson fielding error in the fourth and fifth innings, respectively. Entering Tuesday, Swanson had committed two errors in a game four times in his big-league career spanning 10,978 2/3 innings. It marked his first two-error game as a Cub.
The Cubs’ best chance for a comeback win was thwarted in the seventh inning as they trailed by three. Crow-Armstrong, who has produced only one multi-RBI game since July 11, faced a tough bases-loaded lefty-lefty matchup against Little. He tossed six consecutive knuckle-curveballs to Crow-Armstrong, none within the strike zone. The last one, right below the zone, had Crow-Armstrong flailing to end the frame.
Crow-Armstrong didn’t feel he was putting too much pressure on himself in that moment amid his struggles.
“Those situations are the ones you want to be in regardless,” Crow-Armstrong said.
Toronto Blue Jays’ Alejandro Kirk slides safely into second base as Chicago Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson defends during the fifth inning in Toronto on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)
The Cubs know they are a better team than what they have shown in a stretch that has largely been buoyed by the rotation. They point to how collectively the group keeps swinging at the right pitches. That is the starting point for getting out of a funk.
“The optimism is we’ve got good hitters, and we’ve scored a lot of runs this year, and they’ve done a lot of damage this year,” Counsell said. “There’s no woe is me here and ‘oh no,’ this is baseball, and you’ve got to have a good at-bat and have good at-bats with whatever the situation is and keep grinding through them.”
For as much as the Cubs have said the right things over the last four weeks as their division lead vanished and now their hold on a playoff spot becomes tenuous, the steadiness the team has preached hasn’t resulted in the spark to get them going again. As the on-field frustrations continue to bubble over, the Cubs know what is at stake.
Figuring out how to turn things around might require shaking things up.
“There’s a lot of different buttons to press, we’ve obviously all had plenty of conversations, and whether it’s in the hitters meetings or just throughout the day while we’re in here, guys obviously love being at the field and putting in the work to get better,” Swanson said. “So maybe there’s got to be a different button that gets pressed. But guys are obviously coming in here with the right intentions and doing the right things in order for us to get to where we want to get to. It’s just a matter of time when that happens.”
Originally Published: August 12, 2025 at 9:35 PM CDT