One-third of the season, 54 games, remains.
While we wait for the next few hours for the Cubs to make more trades, I thought I’d take a look at the team as an off day separates the first two-thirds of the 2025 season from the last third to come.
The Cubs have played 108 games and are 64-44, a .583 winning percentage that would extrapolate to a 95-win season. That, in most years, would be more than enough to win the NL Central. In fact, in the Cubs’ 2016 World Series championship season, they were 67-41 at this juncture, just three games better than this year’s team. And the Cubs have won 95 games just once since 2016, in 2018 when they lost the tiebreaker game to the Brewers and were forced into the Wild Card game and… well, you know all that.
This year, the Cubs are also in competition with the Brewers for the top spot in the NL Central, with Milwaukee currently leading by one game. The Cubs led the division for 111 days before falling out of first place with the two losses to the Brewers earlier this week.
Tankathon still lists the Cubs with one of the easiest remaining schedules — third-easiest as of this morning, as their upcoming opponents have an aggregate .482 winning percentage. The Brewers have the 10th-toughest remaining schedule; their opponents have an aggregate winning percentage of .506.
Of course, you can often throw that out the window when the games are actually played. The Cubs lost two of three to the under-.500 Royals at home. Then the Brewers did the same against the under-.500 Marlins.
The Cubs’ 10-run outburst Wednesday has them with the most runs of any team in baseball, 570, entering Thursday’s action (only three games will be played today). If they maintain that pace (5.28 runs per game), they will score 858 runs, which would be the most by any Cubs team since 1930.
The problem, as you might guess, is pitching. The Cubs rank 14th in fewest runs allowed, while the Brewers are fifth. Milwaukee has a very good pitching staff and are eighth in runs scored, while the Cubs have an excellent offense and the pitching… needs help.
That’s been addressed, in part, by the two trades already made.
In the meantime, the Cubs have two players who could hit 40 home runs this year — Pete Crow-Armstrong (now with 27) and Seiya Suzuki (26), though Suzuki has been in a terrible slump. If PCA gets to 40, he’ll become the first Cub to get there since Derrek Lee (46 in 2005), and only the second Cubs left-handed hitter ever to hit 40 or more (Billy Williams had 42 in 1970).
The Cubs have also stolen 121 bases and rank second in that category to the Rays (141). That puts the Cubs on pace for 182 steals, which would be their most since 1985, when they also had 182. Before that you have to go back to 1923, when the Cubs had 183 steals. This team has not been a running team for decades, and the speed is something that’s helped them score runs.
Speaking of which:
Pete Crow-Armstrong has 27 home runs, 30 doubles, and 29 stolen bases this season.
He is the only Chicago Cub to ever hit all three of those milestones in a single year and only one of three Cubs to even record a 25 HR/25 2B/25 SB season. pic.twitter.com/MsItH7i0iL
— Jim Miloch (@podoffame) July 31, 2025
You know of the pitching issues so I won’t belabor them here. Hopefully they will be addressed by the end of the day, and also when Jameson Taillon and Javier Assad are ready to return from the injured list.
This is a very good Cubs team and despite the challenge from our neighbors to the north, I believe the Cubs will win the NL Central and have one of the first-round byes into the division series round in October.
As always, we await developments.