NEWSLETTER
A daily ritual since I was a kid, I like to check the MLB standings each morning to stay on top of the divisional and playoff races, and obviously to see where the Chicago Cubs fit in the landscape. Mostly, I’m looking at a team’s record and games back, rather than their placement in a given division – since the “last place” team in one division might very well be the “third place” team if in another division. It kinda doesn’t matter.
However.
I can’t help but notice when the Cubs are in last place in the NL Central. It bothers me. Even when the Cubs were in the dregs of the last rebuild, it still kinda burned me up to think about them being the “worst team in the division” in a given year.
So, with the Cubs now having held down last place for most of the last ten days (eight of twelve, including the last three, to be precise), I got to thinking about those previous bad seasons. When was the last time the Cubs were the last place team in the division for roughly this long? This deep into the season?
Well, firstly, the Cubs haven’t seen last place at all this late in the season since the first week of August in 2022, where they fell to last place for exactly one day (a double-header sweep in St. Louis). A blip from which they jumped almost immediately back into third place, where they remained the rest of that rebuilding-but-totally-not-rebuilding season.
At this time in 2021, of course, the Cubs were actually clinging to first place for a good long while before a certain super-long losing streak caused a precipitous fall and a somber sell-off. Even after that sell-off, though, the Cubs never fell to fifth place in 2021.
The Cubs led the division the whole way in the shortened 2020 season. Huzzah.
In 2019, the Cubs were in first or second place just about the whole season until the final two weeks, which I have blocked from my memory.
In 2018, a similar story, except the Cubs were in first place until Game 163, which I have also chosen not to remember.
The Cubs obviously were never close to last place in any of 2017, 2016, or 2015.
So at last we arrive at 2014, the final year of the previous rebuild, and the last time the Cubs spent an appreciable chuck of the season – most of it that year – in last place in the NL Central.
Thus, even if you set aside the EXPECTATIONS associated with this 2024 season, the Cubs haven’t been in last place this deep into the season (for this long) in a decade. You know, back when they were more or less expressly TRYING to be that bad.
And outside of LITERALLY ONE DAY in August of 2022, the Cubs essentially haven’t been in last place AT ALL since 2014. What is happening right now is some rarified bad air for the Cubs of recent vintage, even through the second rebuild.
None of this is to say the Cubs will remain in last place for much longer. They are only barely in the spot as it is. Maybe this, too, will prove to have been only a very brief blip.
But the longer it lasts, the more uncommon it will have become to see the Cubs in last place in the NL Central this deep into the season. NOT FUN, my friends. NOT FUN AT ALL.
