CHICAGO — Craig Counsell’s style isn’t for everyone. The Chicago Cubs manager rarely displays his emotions in the dugout. The televised media briefings do not capture his sneaky sense of humor or the detailed insights he delivers off-camera. When things are going wrong, it can project a kind of detachment.Counsell’s patience, experience and empathy are the same traits that give him so much credibility within the Wrigley Field clubhouse and the attached office building where the club’s executives work behind the scenes. The circumstances of Counsell’s arrival — team president Jed Hoyer secretly negotiated a five-year, $40 million deal after the 2023 season and then abruptly fired manager David Ross — also raised the expectations.The repeated boos during Saturday’s 3-0 loss to the Houston Astros made it hard to remember that the Cubs were recently the sport’s hottest team. The crowd of 40,017 on Memorial Day weekend reacted to this bad stretch that has seen the Cubs lose seven straight games and five consecutive series while Counsell’s old team, the Milwaukee Brewers, again took over first place in the National League Central.As promised after Friday’s loss, Counsell did something different with Saturday’s lineup. The problem is the Cubs got the same result, which makes you wonder when the club will enact more dramatic changes.“This is the job,” Counsell said. “Hitting is hard for everybody. It’s not your first slump. You stick to things that have gotten you out of them. You stick to things that have made you good. You keep trying to reinforce that. The challenge is to stay with that stuff when you’re not getting results.“We’ve struggled as a team for two weeks here. While frustrating, it’s still two weeks, you know? We’re going to come out of this. It’s going to be fine. We’re a good baseball team. It’s all going to happen, but while you go through it, you got to sit in some discomfort.”Counsell told Ian Happ to sit and watch Saturday’s game while moving Pete Crow-Armstrong into the leadoff spot and making Nico Hoerner the cleanup hitter. The Cubs responded with three singles total off Astros starter Kai-Wei Tang and three different relievers.One of those hits was a pop-up that Houston second baseman Braden Shewmake lost in the sun, and that third-inning rally quickly ended when Crow-Armstrong got caught trying to steal second base.“Whatever the lineup is,” Crow-Armstrong said, “we got to do a better job of capitalizing with guys on base, and picking spots to run.“This team’s too good to let this go on very much longer. We show up, do the work, stuff’s bound to turn around.”Crow-Armstrong, the All-Star center fielder who had a rough week, takes his cues from an established group of older players and a manager who does not overreact.In terms of lineup construction, “there wasn’t much thought to it,” Counsell said. “You’re just kind of giving guys a different look in terms of when they’re going up there.” Given the extent to which this entire offense is slumping, the manager could have rationalized benching any one of several hitters.Dansby Swanson has a .189 batting average in the fourth season of a seven-year, $177 million contract. Alex Bregman’s offensive impact (.684 OPS) has been too quiet at the start of his five-year, $175 million deal. In a contract year, Seiya Suzuki is hitting .130 with runners in scoring position.In the last two days, the Cubs also presented different alternatives by promoting Pedro Ramírez and Kevin Alcántara, two of the organization’s top prospects at Triple-A Iowa.“We need to get Ian a break,” Counsell said. “We’ve got a lot of guys not hitting. That’s kind of why we’re in the middle of this, right? But I think Ian’s probably feeling it the most.”Cubs slugger Ian Happ leads the team with 10 home runs, but he’s striking out at an alarming rate. (Daniel Bartel / Getty Images)Happ still leads the team with 10 home runs this season, and he’s a four-time Gold Glove winner in left field with a consistent track record of production. His OPS+ across the last four years looks like this: 117, 118, 120 and 120, which makes him a solidly above-average hitter.Happ, though, is striking out at an alarming rate (33.2 percent) and batting .143 with runners in scoring position. He does not play a premium position, and it’s a spot where the Cubs have developed options. His cold streaks are pronounced.“This is the great thing and the crushing thing about our game,” Counsell said. “All the guys know that they’re going to go through this, right? But when you’re going through it, it just hurts, right? And you don’t understand how you got there. You don’t understand how you’re going to get out of it. It feels worse than it is.“That’s kind of what Ian and I talked about. You kind of laugh about it. I don’t want to minimize that, or make that sound like we’re not trying to get it right. But it’s what the game does to you a little bit. It’s what performance does to you. It’s what out-of-character performance does to you. You have to put it in the right frame to get out of it, sometimes.”Chicago’s position players stayed remarkably healthy last season, to a degree that club officials acknowledged a certain amount of luck that would be difficult to repeat. The group of bench players was also not particularly strong.Under those circumstances, Counsell mostly rolled with a stable lineup that featured seven hitters who received at least 590 plate appearances, plus catcher Carson Kelly and third baseman Matt Shaw, who each played consistently enough to accumulate 3-plus Wins Above Replacement, per Baseball Reference.Now that the Cubs have a deeper pool of players to deal with injuries and underperformance, will some of these day-to-day spots be more up for grabs?“No,” Counsell said. “I don’t see that.”Remember, it was only two weeks ago that the Cubs saw the end of their second 10-game winning streak, part of a historically great start to the season that highlighted Counsell’s sense of calm and feel for matchups.“During the course of a long season, you try to keep everybody right,” Counsell said. “Ian’s struggling right now. We got a bunch of guys struggling right now. We could choose a bunch of days off. Depending on how we’re doing, you can kind of see it moving forward here.“We do have guys we can plug in there, but this group is very capable of producing and performing every day.”On Saturday afternoon, the Astros witnessed Chicago’s spectacular defense with Crow-Armstrong’s leaping catch into the ivy and Hoerner’s between-the-legs throw to first base. That highlight-reel ability should never go into a slump.Colin Rea, the swingman pushed into the rotation amid multiple injuries, submitted a quality start by going seven innings and containing Houston’s offense outside of Christian Walker’s two home runs. As much attention as Chicago’s struggling lineup is getting right now, the state of a depleted pitching staff is probably the much larger concern moving forward.“When you’re winning, you don’t really think about anything else,” Rea said. “Everything kind of takes care of itself. And then when you’re going through stuff like we’re going through now, it’s like constantly on your mind.”