The Cubs might have put their recent 10-game losing streak and a miserable end to May behind them.
But the sting is still there.
It has been a bizarre first two months for the team, which rattled off a pair of 10-game winning streaks before plummeting out of first place in the National League Central with 10 straight losses.
“Guys have been playing this game a long time in this locker room,” starter Colin Rea told the Sun-Times on Tuesday. “And you could probably go around the room and say that no one’s [experienced] the start to the season that we’ve had.”
It seemed like a monkey off their back when the Cubs stopped their slide with two wins last week in Pittsburgh. But a sour weekend series in St. Louis followed, and the Cubs finished May in a 5-16 rut. They’ve gone seven consecutive series without a series win.
And on Tuesday night, with a 2-1 loss to the Athletics at Wrigley Field, they dropped the first game of a 22-game stretch against teams that started the month below .500.
Given the championship-level expectations, something much different than this was expected.
“This has been a wake-up call, I hope, for everyone,” Tuesday’s starter, Jameson Taillon (2-5), said after the game. “Nothing’s going to be handed to us. And the Brewers are for real again — they’re a very good team. Our division’s really good. The league’s really tough. And it’s going to take a lot of work to dig ourselves out of this.
“There’s urgency. Once you lose 10 in a row, I think the urgency’s at a pretty high level, to be honest.”
The Cubs (32-29) only had one hit after the second inning, with 20 of their last 22 hitters retired. They obviously have yet to exorcise what ailed them during the losing streak.
“When you’re winning all those games, you walk in the clubhouse and you expect to win that day,” Rea said. “It was rough there when we were losing. Guys were going through some rough patches, and some guys still are.
“After we won in Pittsburgh, my thoughts were: ‘Let’s see what happens the next couple weeks.’ Because it was just two games. ‘Yeah, it feels nice to put the losing streak behind us, but what are we going to do moving forward after we win a couple?’ ”
So far, it hasn’t been much prettier than it was during the skid. It’s time for the Cubs to get things right before it gets too late.
“There’s still a lot of time left,” center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said. “But you don’t want to fall into a trap of getting too comfortable when stuff isn’t going very well. There comes a time when you do want to turn it around and it kind of has to [turn around]. ‘A wake-up call’ is a nice way to put it.”
PCA thriving at the top
Since manager Craig Counsell shook up his lineup and moved Crow-Armstrong to the top, things have been going well for the 2025 All-Star. In 10 games batting in the Nos. 1 and 2 spots in the lineup, he’s hitting .308/.404/.462.
“I’m very confident in my work right now,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I’ve seen it pay some nice dividends, but I’m just confident because of the work and the plan I take into each at-bat.”
Said Counsell: “I told him this: ‘There’s a responsibility of hitting first in the lineup. We are choosing you to hit most.’ That’s a responsibility. Hopefully that means something.”
