The Cubs’ postseason disappeared fast, and the offense that was supposed to carry them never showed up.
Chicago dropped Game 1 and Game 2 of the NL Wild Card round to the San Diego Padres, and the pitching wasn’t the only thing that let them down. The bigger story was how completely the bats vanished. In a two-game series, the Cubs set an unwanted MLB record by posting a .145 slugging percentage, the lowest in any multi-game postseason series in league history.
OptaSTATS laid out the full list of the previous low-water marks, and the Cubs now sit at the bottom: “Lowest slugging percentage in a multi-game postseason series, MLB history: .145 - 2026 Cubs (NLWC), .153 - 2020 Twins (ALWC), .154 - 2022 Rays (ALWC), .174 - 1998 Rangers (ALDS), .179 - 2019 Cardinals (NLCS),” OptaSTATS shared.
That .145 figure is staggering on its own, but it gets even stranger when you stack it against what the Cubs did during the regular season. They led Major League Baseball in slugging percentage at .428, then turned around and became the first team ever to finish a postseason series below .150.
The team-wide numbers from the series tell the same bleak story. The Cubs finished 8-for-62, hit .129, managed one double, and didn’t record a triple or a home run. They scored one run, finished with a .374 OPS, and posted a 7 OPS+.
Several of the Cubs’ biggest names never got going at all. Pete Crow-Armstrong, Alex Bregman, Michael Busch, Ian Happ, Matt Shaw, Michael Conforto, and Dansby Swanson all went hitless in the series.
Nico Hoerner provided the only extra-base hit, a double that came with Chicago down to its last two outs against Mason Miller in the ninth inning and trailing 4-1.
For a team that led the sport in slugging during the regular season, the collapse was extreme enough to leave the Cubs with some of the worst offensive postseason history the league has ever seen.
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