As the temperatures start to heat up, the question around the Chicago Cubs is: when will the bats heat up as well?

In a 5-0 shutout of the Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday, the Cubs didn’t register their first hit until the third inning when left fielder Ian Happ singled on a line drive to center. Starting Cubs pitcher Javier Assad threw 94 pitches over six innings with four hits, four walks, four strikeouts and no runs.

Leading up to Sunday’s game against the division rival, the Cubs were slashing .236/.315/.390 as a team, where they rank 19th, 13th, and 14th, respectively, in the majors.

With Cody Bellinger and Seiya Suzuki out of the lineup, the offense has been a lingering question for a couple of weeks and their absences show in the slim margins — except for that 17-run shutout by the Red Sox on April 27 — by which the team has won and lost. Suzuki and Bellinger have been ramping up for their returns and were running and hitting over the weekend. They’re expected to be back in the lineup within the coming days to help stabilize the offense.

Through the last five games, shortstop Dansby Swanson has an average of .067 and didn’t register a hit Friday or Saturday.

“I think with Dansby he has such a track record that we can kind of go back to. And we’re always trying to just kind of maintain a lot of his movements and some of the things that he’s working on approach-wise,” hitting coach Dustin Kelly said Sunday. “With some of the guys that have that track record, we try not to get too far away from what they’re really good at and what they’ve done really good in the past. There’s always little tweaks, little mechanical things that we are always kind of monitoring, but it’s usually not that far away. And I think that’s kind of where we feel with him right now.”

Photos: Chicago Cubs 5, Milwaukee Brewers 0

Kelly shared that despite Swanson’s recent numbers, he has encouraged the All-Star to remain confident and know that “each day is a new day and he has some way to impact the team.” Swanson, who has recorded a career high in ground balls and whiffs, broke through Sunday hitting a home run to center field in the sixth inning, bringing his season total to four and likely lifting his confidence a little.

“We’re all still human, right? And nobody wants to perform better than us. And at times, you just get so lost in results and numbers and you forget that the main job is to just show up as yourself and be yourself and be committed to who God made you to be,” Swanson said postgame.

“The biggest thing is just being connected. When you’re connected good things happen and this year has been a lot of disconnected moments in my swing and we’ve been working hard day and night almost to figure it out. I think today was a good step in the right direction,” Swanson said.

With late-game pitching an issue over the current 16-game stretch, the Cubs are desperately in need of some clutch hitting. So what exactly are they doing to try to get out of their collective hitting slump entering the third month of the season?

In their assessments of players’ hitting mechanics, some key markers Kelly and his staff look at are stride length, stride height and hand placement.

“There’s a ton of technology, there’s a ton of information for all these guys on their own to go look at and then we have a time in-house as well. (What) we talk about as hitting coaches a lot is we’re going to take the complex as coaches and try to make it really simple for the players,” Kelly said. “And a lot of times it’s just ‘hey you gotta be on the fastball in the middle of the zone and make sure you’re on time for that and use the big part of the field.’ Easier said than done but a lot of times that’s the approach you have to take to make it really simple for guys.”

Thanks to some promising starting pitching, the Cubs’ offensive slump hasn’t impacted their place in the standings, where they’re tied with the Brewers for the National League Central lead. But with upcoming games against the San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves and the remaining division opponents, the Cubs need to improve their hitting — whether it be mechanics, how they see the ball or confidence — or their win total could look as questionable as their swings.

Sunday notes…

• ABOUT LEADS: In 11 of the Cubs’ 20 wins, their margin of victory was equal to their largest lead of the game, and they won those games by a total of 41 runs. In the nine other wins, including yesterday, they won by fewer runs than their largest lead, finally prevailing by a combined 24 runs after having held largest leads that added up to 45. In eight of their 14 losses, they held leads, with their biggest leads adding up to 24 runs. They lost the games by a combined 22. They never led in six games, which they lost by a total of 28 runs. (Courtesy BCB’s JohnW53)
• ABOUT WINNING, MOSTLY BECAUSE OF THE STARTERS: The Cubs have not lost more than two games in a row this season. In the last 20 games since April 14th, Cubs starting pitchers have a 2.76 ERA.
• THE MOREL FILES: Christopher Morel, last six games since April 29 (basically, this past week): .227/.320/.773 (5-for-22) with four home runs, eight RBI and three walks.
• HEATING UP AFTER A COLD STRETCH: Michael Busch, last three games: 5-for-13 (.385) with two doubles and a triple (shown above). Busch is one of nine Cubs to have exactly one triple this year. The other eight: Miguel Amaya, Cody Bellinger, Ian Happ, Nico Hoerner, Christopher Morel, Dansby Swanson, Patrick Wisdom and the since-departed Garrett Cooper.

Here are today’s particulars.

Cubs lineup:

Brewers lineup:

Javier Assad, RHP vs. Freddy Peralta, RHP

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Javier Assad has quietly turned himself into one of the best pitchers in MLB. Nothing flashy, he just gets outs. He’ll never be a big strikeout pitcher but… who cares, he just gets outs!

Assad made two relief appearances vs. Milwaukee last year, one at the very beginning of the season, one at the very end. I don’t think either one is representative of what Assad can do now.

The Cubs have had trouble with Freddy Peralta in the past. He’s got a career 3.34 ERA and 1.146 WHIP against them in 15 appearances (10 starts).

Ian Happ has an odd line vs. Peralta — 1-for-20, but the one hit is a home run. Also four walks. The only other Cub with more than a handful of PA vs. Peralta is Nico Hoerner, who’s 3-for-13 with two doubles.

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The 2024 Game Thread procedure will be like last year’s, similar to what we’ve used for Spring Training.

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Discuss amongst yourselves.

MILWAUKEE — UW-Milwaukee student Thomas Mulkerrins has spent every night since Monday sleeping outside in a tent on his school’s campus, an experience he said has been anything but comfortable.

“I woke up with a sunburn,” he said. “But at night it’s freezing cold, so I’ll wrap myself up in (a blanket) and then I wake up sweating, so that’s been tough.”

Mulkerrins serves as co-chair of UMM’s Young Democratic Socialist of America, He told TMJ4’s Tahleel Mohieldin that doesn’t plan on leaving until the demands he and fellow protestors, in support of Palestine, have laid out are met.

“We’re here for Gaza. What we’re doing is super important,” he said. “It’s very straightforward a genocide what’s happening right now. Children are dying, they’re starving the people.”

Protestors have been pushing the university to disclose their financial investments and cut all ties with Israel.

After six days of camping outside junior and co-chair of the UWM Students for a Democratic Society, Audari Tamayo told Mohieldin that university leaders have done little to meet their demands.

“Just those mass emails, they sent to the school to try to placate us,” Tamayo said.

Friday the UWM Foundation released a statement about their $237 million investment portfolio. A message Mulkerrins said was woefully inadequate.

“We’re asking for an itemized list and they gave us a description of what a bond is,” Mulkerrins criticized. “I would hope that they would have more faith in their Econ 101 classes which most of us have taken.”

The statement did provide some information. The Foundation noted in part that while none of their bond investments include weapons manufacturers or governments in the Middle East, they can’t select what investments are included in their equity mutual funds because of how they are managed.

Tahleel Mohieldin, TMJ4 News

“If it’s true that they have no say where their money goes, then they shouldn’t be putting their money where they have no say,” Tamayo said. “If it’s true that they’re not investing in these things then they need to show us the receipts if they have nothing to hide.”

He also said while he believes university administrators are falling short, their encampment is still making progress with others in the community offering their support including UWM faculty and alumni.

Tamayo and other campers said they have every intention of keeping their encampment peaceful as they set up barricades they said were for their own protection from outside agitators.

He said peaceful observers of all backgrounds however are welcome, siting the Jewish Shabbat dinner and Muslim Jummah prayer held Friday at the encampment as examples.

“If anybody feels unsafe it’s because they haven’t stepped foot in this encampment,” he added.

Both Tamayo and Mulkerrins said so far, the university has been hands off the encampment but with campuses across the country clashing with police they’re aware that could change. Still, they said they have no intention of slowing down.

“If it does happen here, we’ll be back up strong the next day,” Mulkerrin said, looking to UW-Madison as an example. “They can come in, they can arrest us, they can charge us, it’s not going to stop us.”

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