The Cubs are exactly one-third of the way through the 2026 season.
Nine games ago, at 29-16, they had a .644 winning percentage, which would be a 104-win pace for a full season.
Now? After 54 games and on a nine-game losing streak, their 29-25 record is on pace for just 87 wins.
So which is the real Cubs team? We will find out over the next 108 games, of course, but the way this team has won — and lost — is utterly confounding. Two 10-game winning streaks and a nine-game losing streak, all within the season’s
first third?
BCB’s JohnW53 noted this after the eighth loss:
The Cubs have tied for the longest losing streak in MLB history by a team that also had multiple double-digit winning streaks. The 1916 Giants won 17, 14 and 12 in a row (the last two separated by a tie) and lost eight. The losing streak came before the winning streaks, making the Giants 1-9. They were 2-13 when they won 17. The two subsequent streaks came in September. They finished 86-66, in fourth place, seven games out of first.
So now the Cubs stand alone in accomplishing that “feat,” something I’m sure no one connected with the team wanted.
This year’s Cubs aren’t alone in franchise history in roaring off to a great start, then posting a long losing streak.
In 1970, the Cubs began 1-3, then won 11 in a row — all but the last one at Wrigley Field, including two consecutive walk-off victories, one over the Phillies, one over the Expos. In that win over Montreal, the Cubs blew a 6-4 ninth-inning lead, using four different pitchers in that inning, and the Expos led 7-6 going to the bottom of the ninth. In that ninth, Willie Smith doubled in Boots Day to tie the game with one out, then the Cubs loaded the bases with two out with walks by Don Kessinger and Billy Williams. Ron Santo then ran the count full and Expos reliever Carroll Sembera walked him, forcing in the winning run.
The Cubs played around .500 ball for the next two months. Even with that, after defeating the Cardinals 8-3 on June 20, 1970 they were 35-25 and led the NL East by 4.5 games. It felt to many of us who lived through it that this version of the Cubs was going to make up for what had happened the previous year.
And then… the Cubs lost 12 in a row. The first seven of those were at home, including being swept in a doubleheader by the Mets. When the streak finally ended, the Cubs were 35-37 and 4.5 games behind.
They managed to pick up the pace — a little. They stayed close to first place much of the summer and on Sept. 13, they trailed the Pirates 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth when, with two out, Smith lofted a routine fly to center — and Matty Alou of the Pirates dropped it. Smith wound up on second, and three straight singles by Kessinger, Glenn Beckert and Williams won the game. The Cubs were 76-69 and one game out of first place. They won the next day, too, and at 77-69 and one game back, hopes were high.
They lost the next two games, but still trailed by only two games with 14 remaining.
1970 was the last year the Chicago Bears played in Wrigley Field. And by a scheduling agreement between the NFL and MLB, the Cubs were forced to play their final 14 games of 1970 on the road. They were a bad road team that year even while going a good 46-34 at home. On that 14-game road trip, though, they won the first three and at 80-71, were 1.5 games back with 11 remaining. Maybe… ?
Nope. The Cubs lost seven of those 11 and finished second, five games behind the Pirates. Apart from the wacky 1973 NL East race, they wouldn’t get that close to first place in September again until 1984.
What happened in 1970? The bullpen fell apart, mostly. The offense was great. Billy Williams hit .322/.391/.586 with a career-high 42 home runs (he’s the only Cubs left-handed hitter to have a 40-homer season) and had the Cubs won the division, he’d likely have been named MVP (he finished second to Johnny Bench). Jim Hickman was fantastic, batting .315/.419/.582 with 32 home runs and finishing eighth in MVP voting. The Cubs scored 806 runs, second-most in the NL; they hadn’t scored over 800 runs since 1937 and wouldn’t again until 1998. The pitching staff overall allowed 679 runs, third-fewest in the league. Their RS/RA projection was for 94 wins, which would have won the division easily.
The bullpen, though, was terrible. Phil Regan, who had started blowing saves near the end of the 1969 season, had 12 saves in 1970 — and nine blown saves. Right there, converting those save opportunities would have been enough to win the division. The team had 17 blown saves and six walk-off losses (all six in mid-June or later), and while the modern concept of “closer” did not exist back then, that was enough to doom the 1970 Cubs, who were probably a better team overall than the 1969 version. Plus, there was no real dominant team in the division — it was there for the taking. The Cubs just didn’t take it.
The Cubs sure could have used Ted Abernathy in 1970, but for some reason Leo Durocher didn’t like Abernathy. He was traded to the Cardinals for no one you’ve ever heard of and later went on to have three good years for the Royals.
A similar collapse happened to the Cubs in 1985 coming off the 1984 division title year. Rick Sutcliffe had been re-signed to a multi-year deal, which at the time made everyone happy. Ryne Sandberg was coming off his MVP season at age 25, and hopes were extremely high.
The Cubs started the year like they were going to repeat. They were 35-19 and led the NL East by four games after defeating the Expos on June 11, and many thought it could be a 100-win season.
And then… the team lost 13 in a row, which matched a franchise record that had been set in 1944 and equaled in 1982. No Cubs team has lost that many in a row in the four decades since. Four of the losses were by one run. After the streak ended the Cubs were 35-32 and 4.5 games behind the Expos, who were then in first place.
Sutcliffe had suffered a hamstring injury running the bases in a win over the Braves May 19. He came back after just a couple of weeks, but his pitching wasn’t quite up to his previous level. Later in the year he would suffer shoulder and groin injuries. It was the shoulder issues that eventually made Sutcliffe less than the pitcher he could have been.
And then the four other regular rotation Cubs starters also went down with injuries. Scott Sanderson, Dennis Eckersley, Steve Trout and Dick Ruthven all missed time with various maladies. No Cubs starter made more than 25 starts in 1985 (Sutcliffe), and so beyond those five, 59 games were started by Ray Fontenot, Lary Sorensen, Jay Baller, Steve Engel, Ron Meridith, Derek Botelho, Reggie Patterson, Johnny Abrego and whatever was left of Larry Gura, who had come up as a Cub in 1970 (of all years!), was later traded away for (again) no one you’ve ever heard of and who had good years for the Royals and Yankees, pitching in the World Series for K.C. in 1980. By ‘85 he was done and posted an 8.41 ERA in five games (four starts) for the Cubs late in the year.
So it was mostly the rotation going down in ‘85 that doomed the Cubs. They managed to stay marginally in the NL East race until Aug. 2, when a 5-4 win over the Mets made them 54-47 and had them 7.5 games out of first place. Then they lost seven straight and 12 of 14 and that, basically, was that. The Cubs offense did okay in ‘85, finishing fourth in the NL with 686 runs (in a lower-offense environment than 1970), but the pitching was horrific, giving up 729 runs. Only the 96-loss Braves (781 runs) allowed more.
Here are some video highlights from 1985, the title obviously referring to all the injuries:
There are, as you can see, some similarities between what happened in 1985 and what’s happening in 2026, with Cubs starters going down one after another. Only Jameson Taillon and Shōta Imanaga have not yet missed a start this year (and let’s hope they don’t!). The difference now is that the Cubs have better fill-in guys than the 1985 crew I listed above. and hopefully Matthew Boyd will return healthy, soon.
This year’s Cubs also have the advantage of multiple wild-card spots they could qualify for if they don’t win the NL Central, something that was not available in 1970 or 1985. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
There are 108 games remaining. It would be good to end the nine-game losing streak… today.
