Cubs Live
The talk all year has been about how the Cubs could be suffering from a “World Series hangover”. After an extremely slow start, the Cubs have been able to finally distance themselves from the Brewers and Cardinals as they look to clinch the division in the next couple of games. The Cubs are playing their best baseball at the right time and are on pace to finish the season with around 90 wins. It doesn’t look like the Cubs are having too much of a hangover, so I decided to look into it to see how they have performed compared to past World Series champions.
The last defending World Series champion to make the playoffs was the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012. They won 88 games as a wildcard team and made it all the way to the NLCS where they were defeated in 7 games to the San Francisco Giants. The last defending champion to win more games than the Cubs are projected to would be the 2010 Yankees, who won 95 games. The playoffs are yet to start, but it appears that the Cubs are having the best regular season of the last five World Series champions. Like the 2017 Cubs, the 2012 Cardinals also had a better second half than their first, as their winning percentage was .18 higher than their first half. That doesn’t compare to the .163 increase the 2017 Cubs are experiencing from the first to second half. In fact, a defending World Series champion has never done what the Cubs are about to do. Dating back to the beginning of the MLB, there has never been a defending World Series champion that was below .500 at the All-Star break that made the postseason. With a 5.5 game lead in the division with a week left in the season, the 2017 Chicago Cubs can create history once again simply by making the playoffs. The way the second half has gone, they’re looking to do more than just make it; they’re more interested in being in company with the 2000 Yankees.
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Kyle MalzhanFounder who is an aspiring journalist who covers the Chicago Cubs daily. Archives
April 2020
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