Cubs Come Home After Road Trip Full of Unsustainable Wins, Needing to Find Sustainable Ones

At long last, the 2024 Cubs have strung together some important wins, and when you glance at the scoreboard, they look impressive and earned. Over the last 30 days, in fact, no one else in MLB has as good a run differential as the North Siders'. 

That's the good news. The news of mixed valence is, of course, that they desperately needed to get this hot, if they wanted to revive and sustain any hope of reaching the postseason--and that they have to stay that way in order to get there. So here's the bad news: What they've done over the last two weeks is utterly unsustainable.

Since Aug. 16, when they began a series against the Blue Jays that launched them into their current 12-3 heater, the Cubs are hitting .337/.430/.568 with runners in scoring position. That, itself, is far better than any team can keep up, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. Against five straight weak, sub-.500 opponents, the Cubs have taken advantage of a relentless parade of bad play by the other team. Errors have put them on the bases and helped them advance. They've even been bailed out on baserunning gaffes that should have resulted in outs. The Marlins, Pirates, and Nationals, especially, weren't ready to play serious baseball when the Cubs came to town in recent days. Miami traded as much of their roster as they possibly could in July. Pittsburgh and Washington are both showing the profound, problematic cracks in their depth, and their dreadful bullpens and defense almost forced the Cubs to win games this week.

That doesn't diminish the value of the wins themselves. Though a team from a suburban county north of Atlanta holds the tiebreaker against them should both clubs end up with the same record, their losses to the Phillies this weekend reduced their edge over the Cubs in the standings to three games. Unbelievably, the Cubs are now within striking distance of a Wild Card berth.

To claim it, though, they have to play much better over their final 25 games. They can't continue to count on getting a hit in a third of their at-bats when runners reach scoring position. They also can't continue getting middling starting pitching, as they have over these 15 contests. Cubs starters have a 4.12 ERA in that span, and while Kyle Hendricks's blowup in Pittsburgh is part of that problem, it can't explain away the team's strikeout rate (25th in MLB) or home-run rate (eighth-highest).

Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga, Jameson Taillon, Javier Assad, Kyle Hendricks, and Jordan Wicks are capable of pitching better than that down the stretch, but they'll need to do so. The team is going to score many fewer runs from here on out than they have over their recent hot streak. They have to make up for that with better run prevention. Meanwhile, as Pete Crow-Armstrong and Miguel Amaya come back to Earth, the team is going to need to get more out of Cody Bellinger, MIchael Busch, and Isaac Paredes.

Under Craig Counsell's able stewardship, the Cubs have shown more resilience, and frankly more sheer talent, than they evinced at any previous stage of this season. They have an outside shot at the postseason, which is better than they could say a fortnight ago. To convert their newfound possibility to reality, though, they have to maintain extraordinary focus and further improve upon their recent improvements. The Yankees, Dodgers, and Phillies won't give the team wins on a platter, the way their recent opponents have, and they can't afford to stop winning for a moment. This has been a fun bounceback, but it's not enough--unless they build upon it.