Back in March, when the 2025 season began, what if I had told you all of these things would happen before the season ended?
- Justin Steele would make just four starts before missing the rest of the year with Tommy John surgery
- Kyle Tucker would have two injuries, a massive two-month slump and miss most of September
- Pete Crow-Armstrong would make the All-Star team, but then hit .216/.262/.372 in the second half
- Seiya Suzuki would go almost seven weeks without hitting a home run
- Miguel Amaya would suffer two injuries and play in only 28 games
- Shōta Imanaga would be injured, miss six weeks and then allow 20 home runs over his last 12 starts
- The Cubs would finish the season with two 39+ year old first baseman on their roster
I could go on, but you get the idea. You might have thought that team would wind up with a losing record, missing the postseason for the second year in a row under manager Craig Counsell.
But all of those things did happen and yet the Cubs won 92 games and will host a Wild Card Series against the Padres beginning tomorrow.
And even though some of the players above had rough stretches,
they also had great times during the year. PCA’s defense had people all over the league saying, “Wow!” many times. He’ll win a Gold Glove and possibly MLB’s Platinum Glove for best overall fielder. Suzuki recovered from his slump to have his first 30-homer season. Tucker hit well when he was healthy.
Cubs President of Baseball Operations Jed Hoyer did some dumpster-diving for relief pitchers and this time hit the jackpot. Brad Keller, Caleb Thielbar and Drew Pomeranz all had excellent seasons and the Cubs pen was one of the best in the league for most of the year. Daniel Palencia stepped up as closer when both Porter Hodge and Ryan Pressly (remember him?) could not do the job. And though Palencia suffered a shoulder injury in September, he seems healthy now and ready to resume closing games in the postseason.
As is the case for most teams that get this far, this Cubs team seems resilient. Even though they played just a bit over .500 ball for the second half of the season (35-31 after the All-Star break), they won when they needed to and the offense seemed to finally get untracked over the final homestand, when the Cubs scored 43 runs in six games against the Cardinals and Mets. That’s the sort of offense they will need beginning Tuesday.
It will, of course, be important for Imanaga and Matthew Boyd to recover their first-half performances and not what happened to them over the last couple of months, when both left-handers gave up way too many home runs. Counsell has hinted that right-handed openers could be used before Boyd and Imanaga in the first two games of the series against the Padres, and I’m all in favor of that. Whatever it takes.
As you know, the Cubs last made the postseason in 2020, the weird pandemic season with no fans in attendance. They got swept out of that by the Marlins, and lost the then-single Wild Card Game to the Rockies in 2018. So the Cubs last won a postseason game and series eight years ago. It’s time to change all that.
There are echoes of Cubs seasons past in the way the 2025 season ended, and how the postseason is beginning. The Cubs’ final regular-season record of 92-70 matches what the ill-fated 1969 crew did. Perhaps this year will end better than that one.
And the Cubs will meet the Padres in the postseason for just the second time in the history of both franchises. We all remember, and certainly don’t need to re-visit, what happened the last time, in 1984.
To San Diego, then: We owe you one. Go Cubs.
