For a first place team, the Chicago Cubs sure have a curious inability to wield a broom.
The Cubs enter play Friday with a 25-19 record, putting them among the game’s elite in 2025.
That level of performance has also given the Cubs plenty of opportunities to finish off series sweeps. But at that one skill, if no other, the North Siders come across as borderline incompetent.
In fact, the Cubs have presented themselves with six chances already this season to polish off a series sweep, the latest opportunity coming Wednesday evening against the lowly Miami Marlins.
Yet the NL Central leaders are a struggling 1-5 in those potential sweep games.
The Cubs are MLB's worst team at completing sweeps
If you reach back through September of 2024, you can add two more failed sweeps to that list, running the Cubs' record in sweep games to 1-7 since Sept. 2, 2024.
This string of sweep incompetence began last September 11 in Los Angeles, when the Cubs lost the third game of a mid-week series with the Dodgers 10-8.
A few weeks later, in the season-ender versus Cincinnati, the Cubs were shut out 3-0 by Hunter Greene and four Reds relievers. Chicago had shut out the Reds in the series’ first two games.
The Cubs did complete a sweep when they christened Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park in early April. They pounded the home-standing Athletics 18-3, 7-4 and 10-2 in those three games.
Since then, however, Cubs dominance in the first two games of a series has meant certain doom in the finale. With a chance to sweep, they have lost five straight: 8-7 to San Diego at Wrigley Field April 6, 6-2 to Texas at Wrigley April 9, 3-2 in 11 innings to Arizona April 20 at Wrigley, 4-0 to Milwaukee May 4 at American Family Field, and, most recently, 3-1 to the Marlins on May 14 back at Wrigley.
That inability to finish the job may sound trivial — the Cubs, after all, did win all those series. But it’s an oddity for a good team.
Considering only the National League’s elite teams of 2025 (say, those that are at least four games above .500) here are their records since last Sept. 2 in potential series sweep games.
Team | Record in sweep chances since 9-2-24 |
|---|---|
Los Angeles Dodgers | 6-1 |
San Diego Padres | 7-2 |
New York Mets | 5-3 |
San Francisco Giants | 3-2 |
Philadelphia Phillies | 4-4 |
St. Louis Cardinals | 3-3 |
Chicago Cubs | 1-7 |
Why are the otherwise powerhouse Cubs so curiously inefficient in potential sweep games? In a phrase, the offense takes the night off.
Since completing their one sweep in Sacramento more than a months ago, the Cubs offense has scored just 12 runs in its five failed sweep efforts… and seven of those dozen runs came in their 8-7, 11-inning loss to the Padres. The Cubs scored just two runs against the Rangers and D-Backs, just one against the Marlins, and they were shut out by the Brewers.
This may or may not be some sort of fatal flaw. After all, winning two out of three in a series is a result any team would gladly take most of the time.
But losing those sweep opportunities consistently does suggest a failure to cash in on chances that is likely to be unsettling, especially to habitually neurotic Cubs fans. Every win matters come the end of the season, and these lost chances could come back to bite Chicago... unless the Cubs find the closet where they stashed their broomsticks.