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1 week ago | 
bleedcubbieblue.com | Thomas Smith
Photo by Griffin Quinn/Getty Images Al did a nice job talking about this team and its heart. This team doesn’t quit. They don’t see themselves as out of it. They have so much thunder available. One has to wonder if the next time the Cubs play the Brewers, they see a shadow hanging over their shoulder. I have no doubt they’ll have some Pete Crow-Armstrong related nightmares in the weeks to come.
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1 week ago | 
bleedcubbieblue.com | Thomas Smith
David Banks-Imagn Images When the Brewers come to town, you can almost always expect competitive baseball. It seems like even when both of these teams aren’t good, they play each other hard. This year, both teams have been pretty good, so it wasn’t hard to envision a tight, back and forth, tense game. It didn’t disappoint. The Brewers jumped out to a two-run lead early with an Isaac Collins homer.
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1 week ago | 
bleedcubbieblue.com | Thomas Smith
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images Had these last 13 games occurred in a different order, say reversed, I’m not sure that the Cubs wouldn’t have lost seven or even more. The Cubs didn’t play great during this stretch. To be clear, they didn’t play badly either. I’ve got the score over 13 games at 47-36 combined. Using a pythagorean expectation calculator, that’s an expected eight wins. So it feels like they were fortunate to come out with seven wins.
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1 week ago | 
bleedcubbieblue.com | Thomas Smith
David Banks-Imagn Images Yet again, the Cubs offense struggled. For the first time this year, this team is not really rising to challenges. They are struggling day after day. But, they won again Saturday. One can simultaneously accept the win and that they did just enough while also recognizing that this team just isn’t giving itself any margin for error. And yet, 13 straight games, six of them against two of the best teams in baseball. Twelve games in, they are 6-6.
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2 weeks ago | 
bleedcubbieblue.com | Thomas Smith
Matt Marton-Imagn Images Last things first, the Cubs lost in extra innings, dropping their record in such games to 3-5. On a Saturday morning ahead of another day game, I won’t waste a lot of words on my thoughts on ghost baserunners. Across every team who entered play Friday night at .500 or better, teams were 56-55 in extra innings. So it’s pretty random baseball.
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2 weeks ago | 
bleedcubbieblue.com | Thomas Smith
Photo by Geoff Stellfox/Getty Images Ten games into this 13 games in 13 days stretch, the Cubs are an even 5-5 after winning Thursday night. Friday will bring another new and interesting strategy. This will be the first time this year that the Cub starters have back-to-back starts each on four days rest. Modern pitchers don’t throw even on four days all that often. I’ll talk more about that at the end of this piece, but that’s one more thing the Cubs are battling.
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2 weeks ago | 
bleedcubbieblue.com | Thomas Smith
Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images For the first seven games of this road trip, the Cubs were pretty good at not getting behind on pitching. Last night, going after the win in the eighth game, they got behind. So we knew going into this game that if Ben Brown didn’t start strong, they might have some trouble. He didn’t start strong and despite not pitching well, there he was into the sixth inning. This was exactly the scenario you didn’t want to develop.
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2 weeks ago | 
bleedcubbieblue.com | Thomas Smith
Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images Facing another pitcher who was a first -ound pick, this could have been another tough night. I’m going to be honest, half way through the game, I was still worried a little. I believe in this team, but this trip has been a bit odd. The Cubs have become a little homer dependent on this trip. I don’t believe that will be a long term thing. But it can be a thing when you face a lot of good pitching. The first three runs in this one were solo homers.
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2 weeks ago | 
bleedcubbieblue.com | Thomas Smith
Photo by Terence Lewis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images My thoughts on modern extra inning baseball are well known. I won’t belabor that. The Cubs are 3-4 in extra innings. In what is a coin flip game (more or less regardless of talent level), that’s not awful. But, there aren’t a lot of splits in which the Cubs have a negative expectation. They are also 4-5 on turf. Anyone remember when, for a short time, there were a lot of teams playing on turf?
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2 weeks ago | 
bleedcubbieblue.com | Thomas Smith
Photo by Nic Antaya/Getty Images I will say, it’s one heck of a thing following and covering a team when I actually have to go and look to find the last series loss. It was just short of one month ago, May 9-11, against the Mets in New York. So the Tigers, Mets, Giants (in Chicago), the Phillies (in Chicago), the Padres and the Dodgers in Japan. That is the sum total of all of the series losses. The Dodgers two-game set in Japan was the only sweep. That’s the good news.
