Streaky Cubs Made MLB History With Recent 10-Game Losing Streak

[Andres Chavez]

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

If there was a word to define the 2026 Chicago Cubs’ season, it would probably be ‘frustrating.’ The team has not one, but two separate 10-game winning streaks, yet they are hovering around the middle of the NL Central, multiple games behind the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers.

That’s largely because, in addition to the two aforementioned streaks, they also had a 10-game losing streak, which they snapped with a victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Wednesday.

In case you were wondering, because we're sure you are, there have been 12 teams in major league history with both a 10-game winning streak and a 10-game losing streak or longer in the same season, and the 2026 Cubs are now the most recent entry.

Chicago Cubs Join A Select Group With Losing Streak

Here they are, in chronological order:

#	Team	Year
1	Cleveland Indians	1931
2	New York Giants	1951
3	Cincinnati Reds	1957
4	Cleveland Indians	1979
5	Atlanta Braves	1982
6	Minnesota Twins	1985
7	Milwaukee Brewers	1987
8	Baltimore Orioles	1987
9	Cleveland Indians	2008
10	Los Angeles Dodgers	2017
11	Cleveland Guardians	2025
12	Chicago Cubs	2026

No team on this list has moved more quickly from a 10+ winning streak to a 10-game (or more) losing streak than the Cubs just did.

Oddities And Fun Facts About The List

The 1987 Brewers were an interesting case, opening that year with 13 straight wins and then accumulating 12 consecutive defeats in May. The 2025 Guardians dropped 10 games in a row from June 26 to July 6. At one point, on July 8, they were 15.5 games behind the Detroit Tigers in the division, but famously stormed back in the standings and stole the AL Central from their rivals in September, largely thanks to a 10-game winning streak from September 11-20.

Shockingly, none of those 11 squads (before this year’s Cubs) went on to win the World Series, but there are some division winners, teams that made it to the League Championship Series, and even to the Fall Classic, like the 2017 Dodgers (who also won 104 games that year) or the 1951 New York Giants in the season of Bobby Thomson’s "Shot Heard 'Round the World." 

Much like the 2017 Dodgers, the 2026 Cubs already have two separate 10-game winning streaks and one losing streak of 10+ games. While the ‘achievement’, if we can call it that, is certainly odd and tells the story of an inconsistent squad, it doesn’t mean that the team in question can’t make it to the Fall Classic.

The 2026 Cubs remain a team built to win now, even if they're flawed. When they’re on, they can beat just about every organization in the league, but we just witnessed the worst-case scenario, too. It serves as a cautionary tale about consistency, not to mention an air-siren warning about the desperate needs of the pitching staff.

In any case, fans sure hope they got the losing streak ‘out of the way’ early in the season, when there’s time to not just climb in the division standings, but also to make the necessary deadline moves to put themselves in a position to compete in the increasingly difficult National League.

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