Craig Counsell Finally Makes Much-Needed Lineup Change
Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that Christopher Morel is going to be fine longterm, but something needed to be done right now to make the team better and maybe take some pressure off the struggling young hitter. Craig Counsell finally made a change with Morel, who might just be considered the biggest disappointment of 2024.
Morel is doing all the things you want to see a developing hitter do at the plate, now in his third season in the big leagues. The right-handed batter has increased his walk rate, lowered his strikeout rate by 10% and he’s still hitting the ball hard on a consistent basis. To some extent, yes Morel has been one of the unluckiest hitters in the entire league. However, at some point you need to see better results because the Cubs are looking up at a lot of teams in the National League standings.
Counsell has primarily penciled Morel’s name into the cleanup spot this season as Morel has batted fourth in 62 of his 74 starts. And while the slugger hasn’t completely tanked this year, Morel has a 93 wRC+, he simply hasn’t been the power presence in the middle of the lineup that the Cubs thought he would be.
Friday’s series opener against the Mets was another example of Morel coming up to the plate with a huge chance to drive in runs and he failed. In the first inning Morel grounded into a double play with the bases loaded and no outs. Then, in the third inning Morel was up with runners at second and third and on a 2-0 curve ball he softly grounded out to Jose Quintana to end the inning.
Morel’s eighth-inning double was his first in the month of June. While he’s doing a decent of job of still drawing walks the hits are severely lacking and have been all season for Morel. He’s slashing .198/.302/.373, with 13 home runs, but we still haven’t seen anything resembling one of his hot stretches.
For Saturday’s game against the Mets, Counsell dropped Morel to sixth in the lineup.
Good. It’s never easy I’m sure to figure out the right time to make a change like this, but I’m glad Counsell finally did. Maybe Morel will feel less pressure now lower in the batter order.
One thing I’ve noticed all season long from Morel at the plate is that while he keeps crushing the ball he’s also hitting a lot and I mean a lot of pop ups. So, I finally checked Morel’s FanGraphs page and well my eyes aren’t lying.
Infield Fly Ball Percentage
2022: 12.8%
2023: 7.6%
2024: 21.5%
It seems like Morel is just missing more often than we’re used to seeing and that’s either resulting into more pop ups or hard-hit ground balls to the left side.
But hey, I’ll continue to believe in the guy who went from a 31% strikeout rate down to 21.8% in one year and oh by the way Morel still leads the Cubs in home runs this season.