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Nearing the end of June the Cubs had just come off of a 4-0 win in Los Angeles over the Dodgers in a game where Chicago combined to no-hit one of the most potent lineups in all of baseball. The Cubs looked poised to be buyers at the MLB Trade Deadline and a move to add an arm to the rotation seemed imminent. The no-hitter was on June 24, the Cubs haven't won since.
Chicago would go on to lost the final three games in the series against the Dodgers and then proceeded to get swept by the Brewers and the Reds. Now, sitting at 42-42 and the all-star break rapidly approaching, the script may have flipped and now, the Cubs may be having a fire sale at the deadline.
Four of the last five losses for the Cubs have been by one run. Interestingly enough, the pitching has been great, the offense has been non-existent. Two of those losses had final scores of 2-1, the other two were 3-2 defeats. Sandwiched between the four, one-run losses, a game in which they led the Brewers 7-0 in the top of the first inning before they imploded and gave up 15 unanswered runs to the Brewers. The most recent sweep the team has faced may have been the final nail in the coffin.
The Cubs are in a real weird spot. They essentially started selling before the season even started, trading Yu Darvish to the San Diego Padres. Darvish was coming off a dominant season in 2020 in which he finished second in the Cy Young voting. Chicago didn't get any real prospects back but instead, were able to shake free of a large portion of Darvish's contract. That was the first red flag of what could lie ahead.
Now, with Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez all potentially hitting free agency this fall, the Cubs are in a position where they need to decide who to trade, who to try and get extensions worked out with and what the blueprint is going to be for the next few years.
The farm system in Chicago is fairly weak and there's not much on the prospect front to be overly eager about over the next couple years. That could change in the snap of a finger if the Cubs opt to trade any of the three of Baez, Bryant or Rizzo.
Craig Kimbrel is another name that could be on the move and the all-star closer is having a phenomenal bounce back season. His stock will never be higher in Chicago than it is at the present time and if the Cubs keep sinking, he could absolutely end up somewhere else.
When zooming out the microscope this has really become a sad state of affairs for the Cubs and their fans.
After winning the World Series in 2016, there weren't necessarily talks of a dynasty but with a super young core in place, the expectations were that of a team that would at least be competing for titles in the years to come. Instead, the Cubs have fluttered since winning the Fall Classic over the Indians in 2016. Even though they've made the playoffs in three of the four years since, they never once felt like a true threat to win it all for one reason or another.
Now, the final stand may have been made and a Cubs roster littered with both talent and weak spots may have hit its peak when they were sitting at 42-33 coming off of that no-hitter against the Dodgers. Expectations varied externally before the year started on the North Side and after a quick start to the year, those expectations grew more and more optimistic despite glaring needs in the rotation. After the recent nine game slide, the Cubs may be exactly where many pegged them to be, right at .500 hovering around being just average. It's just that the path to this spot provided much more optimism and thoughts of giving it one last go with this core group.
The next couple of weeks could drastically change the Cubs and put to an end a run with that nucleus of Baez, Bryant and Rizzo. It's a tough dose of reality to swallow but with all three potentially hitting free agency at the end of the year, it would be foolish for Chicago to hang onto all three at this stage. If they hang on for dear life and the three still end up elsewhere at the end of the season, the Cubs front office will have failed in acquiring top tier prospects when they had the opportunity to do so this July.
The pipe dream would be working out extensions for the trio but if that didn't happen this past offseason or the year before, there shouldn't be much faith that it would happen now in the midst of a 42-42 season. Thus, the Cubs run may be coming to an end in a painful matter. Enjoy these three while they're still wearing that Cubbie blue because in a couple of weeks, things could look very different.
