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When a team hasn’t won a World Series in 107 years, anything resembling a winning team will be hailed as baseball’s next dynasty. It is this over-expectation that has caused even greater heartbreak on the North Side of Chicago for Chicago Cubs fans over the years. While this current Cubs team certainly appears ready to break the century-plus curse within the next five years, fans should temper their expectations for this season to avoid more heartbreak in 2015.
Chicago is competitive this season, but in a tough NL Central division, it’s becoming obvious they’re still the younger brother to the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates. That can be largely attributed to a lack of killer instinct based on inexperience. This isn’t to say the Cubs haven’t been clutch this season; they’ve won nine games on walk-off hits in 2015, most in the major leagues. However, they haven’t shown the ability to join the elite teams in the NL.
One example was when they won back-to-back games against the Los Angeles Dodgers, beating Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke in those two games. Instead of at least taking one of the next two games and taking three out of four in a very important series, they fell in the next two games and settled for a split.
Then, in the first game of a pivotal three-game set with the rival Cardinals, they held a 2-1 lead in the eighth inning when setup man Pedro Strop entered the game. He promptly gave up a game-tying solo home run to Greg Garcia, his first career bomb, and almost completely blew the lead.
That game went into extra innings and the Cubs fell 3-2 in 10 innings. Those are games this team has to win and they folded under the pressure. Certainly, this team is showing more of a killer instinct than they have in the last several seasons, but they’re still not quite there. The Cubs could make the playoffs in 2015, but it’s going to be an uphill climb. They’re a young team that is naturally going to go through some struggles as the season wears on.
It is important for Cubs fans to realize 2015 probably isn’t the year, but the team’s young players might be too talented to be held back for too much longer.
