Cubs snap – After ending a 10-game losing streak in Pittsburgh, the Cubs are trying to answer a bigger question: how to stay steady in a season swinging between extremes, even as problems on the mound and familiar vulnerability come back into view.
PITTSBURGH — The Cubs’ 10-game losing streak ended in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night, but the whiplash has lingered. It’s not just that the skid is over; it’s that it arrived right after a pair of 10-game winning streaks. turning this stretch into the kind of swing that makes even confident teams start talking about what to do with the next fall.
Before Friday’s loss to the rival Cardinals. lefty starter Matthew Boyd tried to keep the moment in perspective. telling the Sun-Times on Friday. “The rest of the story is yet to be written. and it can be written in any sort of way. None of us know how it’s going to go. But I tell you what. we all do believe we are. if not the best team. one of the best teams in baseball.”.
Manager Craig Counsell’s message was simpler, and it landed with a tense realism. “This has been a more extreme baseball team,” Counsell said before Friday’s loss to the rival Cardinals. “If you do this long enough, you think it’s going to be very even, and sometimes it’s not. We’ve got to live with that.”.
That’s the tightrope the Cubs now face. When Boyd framed the team as “one of the best teams in baseball. ” the standings didn’t entirely contradict him—at least not until the skid. The Cubs left that distinction behind with the slide. and the NL Central doesn’t slow down just because the schedule stings. They’re now playing a rival Redbird group that. despite being described as rebuilding. has been winning enough to jockey with Chicago in a division where teams are “all-teams-above-.500.” The Cubs still have work to do to get back to the top of the heap.
If they’re going to do what they were projected to do—dispatch the upstart Cardinals and somehow topple the first-place Brewers—they’ll need stability over a long summer. The problem is that the season so far has not felt like steady climbing. It’s felt like straight up. straight down. and the kind of baseball where confidence can survive a streak but consistency might not.
Boyd offered the clearest window into how the Cubs want to handle the damage. “You never want to go through them, but it’s those valleys that do make you better,” he said. “It’s times like that 10-game losing streak that you can look back on and use it to make yourself better and move forward and say. ‘Let’s make adjustments and grow from these things and. hopefully. not let them happen again.’”.
Designated hitter Michael Conforto described a different benefit—one that’s less about strategy and more about the clubhouse after the lows. “Everybody had a rough patch in there,” he told the Sun-Times. “And when those things happen. you’ve got guys picking each other up and meeting up to talk about the game. talk about what’s not going right. It’s an opportunity for the guys to get even closer than they were before, going through something like that.”.
The challenge is that the “valleys” aren’t theoretical. They’re visible in the game’s details—especially on the mound.
As May nears its conclusion. the Cubs are dealing with what could become a persistent problem: baseball’s most homer-prone pitching staff. Coming into Friday, the staff had allowed a league-worst 79 home runs. Then Shota Imanaga—lefty starter—grew that number during Chicago’s 6-5 defeat, surrendering a trio of round trippers. That pushed the total to eight homers allowed in the last three starts for Imanaga. during which he has an enormous 11.49 ERA. The pattern also echoes last year’s late-season struggles. when he allowed 15 homers over his last nine regular-season starts and three more in a pair of playoff appearances.
It’s not lost on the team that such issues can turn a season’s momentum into a race you can’t win. Winning streaks can mask flaws, but the next drop exposes them—especially in a division where the standings don’t wait for anyone to “get better.”
Another question is already taking shape: when to count the Cubs’ next improvement as real. Boyd. the Cubs’ Opening Day starter. is scheduled to return to the rotation after being sidelined for weeks recovering from knee surgery. He will make a rehab start with Triple-A Iowa on Sunday, and he didn’t try to dress it up.
“I’m super excited to just go compete,” Boyd said. “You try to compete in everything you do, whether it’s rehab or in a game. It’s a lot more fun to do it between the white lines.”
For now, the Cubs have their answer to one immediate problem—the skid is over. But the bigger test is whether they can keep the next stretch from turning the way the last one did, and whether the lessons they talk about will translate into the kind of steadiness their season still needs.
Chicago Cubs Matthew Boyd Craig Counsell Michael Conforto Shota Imanaga Pittsburgh Pirates St. Louis Cardinals Milwaukee Brewers NL Central rehab start Triple-A Iowa knee surgery home runs
So they’re just… up and down now? Cool.
10-game losing streak ended then immediately Cardinals and now everyone’s like “lessons from valleys”?? sounds like they’re blaming the schedule again. Also Cardinals always do this to us so whatever.
Matthew Boyd said “best team in baseball” and then they skid… so was he wrong or did he mean like best at losing? I don’t get how you can be one of the best and then implode right after.
“Extreme baseball team” is such a weird quote. Like is it pitching issues or just vibes? I feel like the mound problems always come back around the same time every year. And the part about “rebuilding” Cardinals still beating them… yeah that tracks. Cubs can’t get too comfortable, apparently.