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The Cubs are going to be just fine
Wednesday’s Say Hey, Baseball includes a reminder that the Cubs aren’t always invincible, MLB giving umps mics, and Orbit playing a prank on Mike Trout.
Photo by Jon Durr/Getty Images
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It’s possible the Cubs of 2016 are never coming back. They don’t have to return for Chicago to have a productive 2017, though. The World Series winning team of last year won 103 games, in large part because they began the season 25-6. Following that, through July 30, the Cubs were just 37-35 — even teams capable of posting an .800 winning percentage for a month can have stretches where they look like a .500 team. That lengthy .500-ish stretch didn’t wreck them, though, as a 22-6 August solved that, and September brought them over 100 wins for the first since 1910.
Will the 2017 Cubs have a similar run at any point? They certainly could! After all, the 2016 team had two of them. Stretches like that where a team absolutely obliterates the competition for a month at a time aren’t necessary, however. A few weeks into the season, the Cubs are 7-7. Their most significant competition, the Cardinals, are even worse off, at 5-9. The two teams ahead of the Cubs are the rebuilding Reds, who are off to a good start but one likely to be forgotten about, and the Brewers, who could definitely surprise if Eric Thames remains fantastic, but are not equipped as well as the Cubs are for success.
Throw in that the Pirates just lost Starling Marte to an 80-game PED suspension, and the only other expected rival for a playoff spot in the division just got a whole lot weaker.
It’s early. The Cubs are .500. They played .500 ball for months at a time in 2016, however, and still managed to win over 100 games and eventually, a World Series championship. No one knows if Chicago is going to repeat either of those feats this year, but the time to worry about that isn’t a little more than halfway through April. They’ve still got the lineup, they’ve still got the pitching, and they’ve still got 148 games left on the schedule.
- MLB is thinking about giving umpires a mic to explain why an instant replay challenge was decided the way it was, which sounds like a big ole waste of time.
- You should probably just watch this weird (and great) play by Adrian Gonzalez, who somehow holds onto a flip from Hyun-jin Ryu to nab the runner at first.
- This kid had a wonderful reaction when his parents surprised him with Cubs tickets.
- Patrick Dubuque takes a look at how pitchers should attack baseball’s weakest hitters.
- Josh Harrison got hit by a pitch four times in a row, and thankfully, Jeff Sullivan noticed.
- Astros’ mascot Orbit played a prank on Mike Trout, but Trout and the Angels got the last laugh.
- It was a baseball-heavy episode of Jeopardy on Tuesday.
- Aaron Judge is as important to the Yankees as he is big, and oh by the way Aaron Judge is pretty big.
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