Chicago Cubs are on another streak…a winning one
By Bill Felber
If the Chicago Cubs ever want to consider a name change, how about Chicago Streaks?
Their 4-3 victory over the Cincinnati Reds Monday ran the team’s streak of victories to seven. They swept a four-game weekend series with Pittsburgh, and before that took two straight from the Minnesota Twins at Target Field.
Chicago Cubs finally go streaking in positive way
It’s the team’s third streak this season of seven or more games. The Cubs lost 11 straight between June 25 and July 6, then lost 12 straight from Aug. 5-16.
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Do you know how unusual it is for a team to win at least seven straight in a season in which they also twice piled up double digit losing streaks? This unusual: The last time a Cubs team did it was two-thirds of a century ago.
The 1954 Cubs lost 11 straight in late June, lost 10 straight in August, then turned around and won seven straight at the end of that same month.
The Cubs team of August 2021 is of course far different from the one that ran up 11 straight pratfalls in June. Among the nine starters in the 11th straight loss – to Philadelphia July 6 – only Jason Heyward, Ian Happ and Wilson Contreras are still with the team.
The August losing and winning streaks, however, are very much products of the same set of players. Outfielders Happ, Heyward and Rafael Ortega, and infielders Patrick Wisdom, Matt Duffy, and Sergio Alcantara have been mainstays on both the winning and losing ends of both streaks.
They sure don’t play like the same cast of characters, especially not the pitchers.
During their 11-game Aug. 5-16 losing streak the Cubs were out-scored 101-43. That’s 101 runs allowed in 100 innings. During this ongoing seven-game winning streak, encompassing 56 innings, the Cubs have outscored their opponents 40-28.
Ponder that for a second: Just a few weeks ago Cubs pitchers were giving up runs at the rate of one per inning; during this winning streak basically the same cast has cut that rate of runs allowed literally in half, to 28 in 56 innings.
The big difference, however, is in the performance of the pitching staff. During the 12-game losing streak, the staff ERA was 8.37…that’s 93 earned runs allowed in 100 innings.
During the current seven-game winning streak, that same staff has delivered a 3.18 ERA…23 earned runs in 65 innings of work.
No player embodies the weirdness of the two streaks more than Ian Happ, the team’s veteran left fielder. During the 12-game losing streak, Happ batted .190 (8-for-42) with 1 home run and 5 RBIs. During the seven-game winning streak, he is batting .387 (12-for-31) with three home runs and seven RBIs. He has hit safely in all seven victories.
Fortune has also played a role in allowing the same cast of players to generate significant losing and winning streaks within the span of a single month. That’s especially true of the ongoing winning streak.
Four of those seven victories have come by a single run, a fifth by two runs. In the last five games of that seven-game run, the winning run scored in the sixth inning or later, three times in the eighth inning or later.
Combine that with the fact that this same cast really did lose 12 straight less than a month ago, and it may be that this winning streak cannot last.
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Given all the talent the Chicago Cubs traded away in July, however, and all the no-names that have been brought in as replacements, one thing is certain: However many winning or losing streaks the team generates this season, this one is turning out to be fun.