It’s going to be interesting down the stretch
Baseball will return to the corner of Clark and Addison tomorrow afternoon as the Cubs start their final 66 games. They’ll open a series against the Boston Red Sox, who at 53-45 are just three games behind the Toronto Blue Jays in American League East. So I wanted to revisit the disturbing trend I highlighted in June of the Cubs losing series to the teams they’d most want to beat in September and October:
Now, a couple of notes. The Cubs bucked this trend by beating the New York Yankees in two games out of three at Yankee Stadium heading into the All-Star break. They’ll immediately get a follow-up opportunity to prove they can beat the teams in contention against the Red Sox this weekend.
Additionally, it’s worth remembering that the Cubs overall strength of schedule was extremely frontloaded. They actually have the fourth easiest remaining schedule according to Power Rankings Guru.
But that overall strength of schedule metric masks some tough games down the stretch. The Cubs have eight games remaining against the Brewers, who are just one game behind them in the division. They have six games left against the Cardinals, including the last three games of the season. While the Cardinals faded a bit before the break and are currently 6½ games behind the Cubs, I think we’d all agree they are always a dangerous opponent.
Outside of the division and the aforementioned Red Sox series, the Cubs have tough series against the Blue Jays and San Francisco Giants on the road. They have all of their games against the Atlanta Braves still left to be played. And because finishing the season against their rival Devil Birds wasn’t enough, the Mets will head to Wrigley Field for the penultimate series of the season.
The Cubs are currently in the middle of their best season since 2016, just one game off the regular season pace of the team who went on to win the World Series (that team was 58-38 through 96 games). But even with an easier schedule than the start of the season, there are still a number of land mines for the Cubs to avoid when they begin play again tomorrow afternoon.