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As fans, it’s always tempting in the early stages of a season to get carried away with current form and win streaks. Major League Baseball suffers from this quite often as it is a grueling season of 162 games.
For Chicago Cubs fans, there is a nervous joy surrounding the team, and while the country’s baseball writers are heaping plaudits on the 2016 incarnation, Chicagoans are merely accepting it with the most diminutive of smiles.
The Cubs’ last World Series win was in 1908, and they haven’t won a National League Pennant since the end of the Second World War.
It’s astonishing and pathetic at the same time – generations of Cubs fans never saw them in the Playoffs. But they need to snap out of their apprehension. This isn’t your great grandfather’s Cubs side.
Currently, the North Siders are 24-6. If any other team started this way, their fanbase would be rabid. But not this superstitious bunch. Cubs supporters are passively filling Wrigley Field each game.
Fans pause at bar windows constantly to see the score through the window. More and more houses have the white W flag flying in place of Blackhawks ones. The team’s attire for a recent bus ride was a story for the local news. Chicago is desperate, albeit quietly, for this team to finally succeed.
The Cubs finished the weekend on a seven-game win streak, having swept the white-hot Washington Nationals at home, and the Pittsburgh Pirates away. They have scored a monstrous 102 runs more than their opponents, and yet aren’t leading the league in hits or home runs. What also makes this a surprising number is the fact that the Cubs are second in the league in runners left on base, implying that while they certainly score, they could really score a whole lot more.
The biggest indicator for their success in creating runs seems to lie in their league leading OBP (on-base percentage – a statistic that measures all the ways a player can get on base). But when you look at their pitching statistics, you really start to see the Cubs’ stature as the best team in the Majors.
The Cubs have the lowest numbers in team ERA (earned run average per nine innings pitched) with 2.48, and in hits allowed, with 194. While these traditional statistics are seen to be somewhat inferior among Sabermetric analysts, you can clearly make connections with the success of the Cubs and these two glaring lows.
The Cubs are also in the basement in terms of walks allowed, and highest when it comes to striking batters out.
All these numbers indicate why Cubs fans need to relax and embrace their success. Local writers are hoping for an ‘L-world series’. Chicago’s North and South sides are connected by the L-Train’s ‘Red Line’, taking fans right to the doorsteps of both Wrigley Field (North) and the White Sox’s US Cellular Field. It’s not inconceivable, given the White Sox’s current form – and, like the Cubs, they have a Cy-Young Award candidate in Chris Sale.
If the current form of both teams continues, the four-game home-and-away series between the two sides in late July will be compelling viewing. For once, the city will be truly divided in their loyalties.
Until then, Cubs fans need to get arrogant and start accepting their new standing, no longer as the ‘little team that could’, rather one that in all likelihood will.
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