The Cubs and .500

[jersey cubs fan]

The early season excitement is gone. The Cubs are losing to bad teams now and a couple games under .500. When will the badness end? Will it end?

Edited May 21, 2023 by jersey cubs fan

[Derwood]

When they get a new hitting coach and/or new manager

[CubinNY]

Maybe in August, but probably not again this season. 

[Bertz]

At all?  I'd say before Memorial Day. Rattling off 3 or 4 in a row isn't that wild of an idea.  For good?  Sometime in late June or July.  The May/June schedule isn't as brutal as it looked preseason, but it's still tough through that Padres series the first week of June, and while the Angels and Giants aren't all that intimidating its still a West Coast trip and those can be problematic.

[jersey cubs fan]

5 minutes ago, Bertz said:

At all?  I'd say before Memorial Day. Rattling off 3 or 4 in a row isn't that wild of an idea.  For good?  Sometime in late June or July.  The May/June schedule isn't as brutal as it looked preseason, but it's still tough through that Padres series the first week of June, and while the Angels and Giants aren't all that intimidating its still a West Coast trip and those can be problematic.

To clarify, at all is correct. 

[Andy]

I'm back to expecting a losing overall record, but I'm going to assume they'll be over .500 again at some point this month.

[Brock Beauchamp]

5 hours ago, Andy said:

I'm back to expecting a losing overall record, but I'm going to assume they'll be over .500 again at some point this month.

That's my take.

And really, everybody in this division looks really bad right now. I don't see the Cubs falling out of the NLC race unless things go really sideways, which likely won't happen if the pitching staff stays even a little bit healthy.

[jersey cubs fan]

Not a lot of faith

[soccer10k]

The Cubs are not yet over .500.

[Tim]

Y'all are a bunch of ninnies. 

Cubs are finishing well over .500 and going to the playoffs.

[jersey cubs fan]

Lotta late voters hanging by a thread here 

[UMFan83]

[jersey cubs fan]

Game over 

[sweetpeteman]

The real question is whether or not the Cubs are in last by the end of the week.

[PackLandVA]

I think the Cubs nice (and surprising) start of 12-7 got most fans optimism up.  They weren't as good as that start indicated.  Since then, they're 7-15 which is pretty bad.  But not completely unexpected.  I didn't like the sweep at Florida, exacerbated by the 1-run losses.  But even worse was losing 3 of 4 to the Nats, especially after winning game one.  A little bit of luck and that 7 game stretch could've been a little different.  Otherwise, they really have played, series wise, not too unsuspectingly.  

 

They came home and one the Florida series, lost the series to the Cards (not really surprising), lost the series to the Twins (one of the best starting rotations in baseball), and have now lost to the Astros in game 1.  They'll probably lose this series and the next at Philly before coming home.  And they have a decent shot of winning the home series against the Mets and Reds before facing TB.

 

I can see them going 7-7 in there next 14 to close out the month 3 games under. The schedule should even out a bit after that. Let's hope anyway.

[Cubs2023]

Everyone knew they schedule was going to get tougher, which is why the start to the season was a bit disappointing, as they could have won 4-5 more games pretty easily. 

I suspect we don't see them back above .500 this year. 

Unfortunately, as we suspected, this is not a very good team. Combine that with wasting an opportunity to win several more games already this year.. not a good combination. 

Edited May 16, 2023 by Cubs2023

[muntjack]

Ian Happ is currently 21st in the NL in position player WAR.

Nico is 15th, Bellinger 13th, Wisdom 12th and Swanson 6th. 

Those are better outcomes than I could have hoped for in March, yet....

 

[mul21]

1 hour ago, muntjack said:

Ian Happ is currently 21st in the NL in position player WAR.

Nico is 15th, Bellinger 13th, Wisdom 12th and Swanson 6th. 

Those are better outcomes than I could have hoped for in March, yet....

 

Where did they rank on April 25th?

[jersey cubs fan]

Officially can’t happen on this road trip. They’ve got 11 games until Memorial Day. Need to go 8-3 to be over .500 then, obviously could still eclipse the mark before then. 

[CubinNY]

When do we get to play the bad teams? 

[UMFan83]

3 hours ago, CubinNY said:

When do we get to play the bad teams? 

We play exactly 2 games against teams with a worse record than us between now and July 17th and that’s the Cardinals who are suddenly playing much better. 
 

we do have 2 series against the Pirates in that span too and they’re now playing much worse so it’s not terrible. But about 70% of the bad teams in our schedule are played between mid August through the rest of the season. 

Edited May 17, 2023 by UMFan83

[17 Seconds]

8 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

We play exactly 2 games against teams with a worse record than us between now and July 17th and that’s the Cardinals who are suddenly playing much better. 
 

we do have 2 series against the Pirates in that span too and they’re now playing much worse so it’s not terrible. But about 70% of the bad teams in our schedule are played between mid August through the rest of the season. 

saying "teams with a worse record than us" makes it sound worse than it is. there are plenty of games against lousy teams between now and July 17th.

[UMFan83]

34 minutes ago, 17 Seconds said:

saying "teams with a worse record than us" makes it sound worse than it is. there are plenty of games against lousy teams between now and July 17th.

Which I kind of pointed out.  We play the Reds, Angels and Giants who are all roughly the same record as us.  Actually now that I look at it the only teams with worse records than us at this point are the Nationals (1 GB), Cardinals (2.5 GB), Rockies (1.5 GB), White Sox (4.5 GB), Royals (7 GB) and A's (a lot behind)

Edited May 17, 2023 by UMFan83

[CubinNY]

47 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Which I kind of pointed out.  We play the Reds, Angels and Giants who are all roughly the same record as us.  Actually now that I look at it the only teams with worse records than us at this point are the Nationals (1 GB), Cardinals (2.5 GB), Rockies (1.5 GB), White Sox (4.5 GB), Royals (7 GB) and A's (a lot behind)

When do we start paying attention to the fecal league standings? When do Jed and Ross get placed on the proverbial hot seat?

[champaignchris]

2 hours ago, CubinNY said:

When do we start paying attention to the fecal league standings? When do Jed and Ross get placed on the proverbial hot seat?

I don’t know what to think about Ross’ job security.  

If management was actually telling the truth in that they thought this team would be competitive this year, I don’t see how Ross comes back if the season keeps going in the trajectory the team is currently on. If he does come back, wouldn’t it be an admission by management that they didn’t give him a good enough team?  But that would put management in a position of having to explain to ownership how they spent $200 million on a team they didn’t expect to win anything. 

In the end, Ross is looking at a third straight losing season as manager.  Not many managers survive that regardless of other factors.