Another year, another “own” goal in the Cubs-Brewers rivalry.
Actually, make that the Brewers-Cubs rivalry. No doubt, the Brewers deserve to be named first. There’s no team they enjoy leaving in the National League Central dust more than the Cubs, and wouldn’t you know it? They’ve all but done it again.
There’s no easy or nice way to say it, but it’s the truth: The North-of-the-Border Nine owns our North Siders.
The Brewers showed up Monday for the opener of a four-game series at Wrigley Field with the best record in the big leagues and a bullyish eight-game lead over the second-place Cubs, who almost certainly will soon be 0-for-3 in the division-winning department since Craig Counsell switched sides to become the sport’s first $8 million-a-year manager.
Worse than that, it stands to be the eighth straight full season — the exception being the pandemic-shortened 60-game sprint in 2020 — in which the Cubs will finish behind the Brewers, who are closing in on their sixth division crown during the most dominant stretch of baseball in franchise history.
“Look, we get 13 chances to play the Brewers,” Counsell said, his team off to a 2-4 start in the season series. “And other than that, we don’t have any control over the Brewers. They’ve got to go play their games, and we go play our games.”
If the implication is that the rivals’ records might be closer if they played each other 162 times, it’s hard to fathom why they would be.
“They’re on pace for a big number — they’re on over a 100-win pace — and that’s hard to keep up with,” Counsell said. “Go ask the rest of major league baseball.”
No one in Cubdom has to ask anybody. To put the bullying in perspective, think back to the mercilessly one-sided decades of Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers and the Packers owning the Bears and know the last time the Packers had the better record eight times in nine years was from 1992 to 2000. Still too fresh for Bears fans, no doubt, but kind of a long time ago.
Counsell didn’t come here to lose to his former team. His boss, Jed Hoyer, didn’t stake his own reputation on an all-in managerial hire just to go oh-fer in division races. Counsell has a couple of years left after this one, and the Cubs are positioned to continue to be a playoff-caliber team. But there’s no sign of the Brewers losing their mojo and fading away.
I asked Counsell how disappointed and/or frustrated he is that the Cubs haven’t been able to close the gap on his watch.
“ ‘Disappointed’ is not the right word,” he said. “They’re good. They’re a good team. I’m not surprised by that, not surprised at all. We’re a good team. We’re not a 100-win team — we’re not going to be a 100-win team this year — but we’re a good team. So that’s the story right now, and we’ve got games in front of us.”
The Cubs finished 10 games behind the Brewers and missed the playoffs in 2024, Counsell’s first season. The gap was smaller — five games — last year, but the Brewers’ postseason series win against the Cubs underscored an undeniable hierarchy.
This season, the low point for the Cubs was a 10-game losing streak in May during which they were swept by the Brewers in three lopsided games — combined score, 19-5 — at Wrigley. The Brewers torched starter Shota Imanaga for eight earned runs in an opening 9-3 win that was reminiscent, right down to the final score, of the Brewers’ 9-3 win in Game 1 of last year’s NL division series, when they jumped on starter Matthew Boyd and the Cubs for six first-inning runs. Both games were like early-years Mike Tyson knockouts.
As Brewers manager Pat Murphy told his players going into that playoff series, “When the bell rings, you’re ready. You don’t get a couple rounds to figure out whether or not you want to fight.”
Before the Cubs’ 10-game losing streak this year, they were in first place by 2½ games over the Brewers. By the end of it, they were in last place, 4½ games behind an uncanny powerhouse that never seems to fail to take advantage of openings and opportunities. The same has happened as the Cubs hit a little 3-7 jag entering the teams’ current series; over that same period, the Brewers kept plowing ahead at 7-3, doubling their lead from four to eight.
On the eve of Opening Day this season, I spoke with Christian Yelich, the longest-tenured Brewer, in Milwaukee. As is the case most years, the Cubs were projected to win more games. Yelich scoffed.
“I think a lot of people have been really waiting for the day that we suck and they can finally say, ‘We told you so, they’re no good,’ ” he said. “We’ve become accustomed to winning and being a postseason team. … That’s definitely not changing this year.”
Murphy — who has an excellent shot at a third straight NL manager of the year award — wasn’t backing down from a brawl in the slightest, either, five months ago.
“Buckle up and get ready,” he said, “because it’s going to be a fight. There’ll be a lot of bloodshed and pain to get to where you want to go.”
It sometimes seems the Cubs are less driven than the Brewers are to finish at the top of the standings.
“I think what motivates our group is playing good baseball and winning as many games as we can, and that’s been a constant since we’ve been together,” Ian Happ, the longest-tenured Cub, said Monday. “It’s always kind of the guiding light. You want to win divisions. You really want to win divisions — it means a lot — but playoff baseball is the important part.”
But the bullies have the Cubs bloodied again.
Getting a bit old, is it not?