The Chicago Cubs’ losing skid is finally over.
The Cubs, after dropping 10 straight and 14 of their last 16, rolled to a dominant 10-4 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park on Wednesday night. It marked the team’s first win since May 15, and ended the team’s longest losing streak since 2022.
And, despite the brutal stretch of baseball, the Cubs still hold a 30-26 record and are in second in the NL Central standings. The Milwaukee Brewers still lead that division, which doesn’t have a team below .500.
After jumping out to a 3-0 lead early, the Cubs dropped six runs in the seventh inning alone to blow the game wide open. Ian Happ got things started with a three-run homer to right, which put the Cubs back in the lead again, and then Michael Conforto followed with a two-run shot of his own. Michael Busch hit an RBI single to wrap the inning and put the Cubs up by six, which was more than enough to give them the win.
Happ also had a two-run single in the first inning. He’s now reached base in 40 straight games in Pittsburgh.
The Cubs had a pair of 10-game win streaks earlier in the season. They started the campaign out 27-12 before completely falling apart. Their offense largely shut down, and nothing was working. Had the Cubs lost on Wednesday, they would have matched the 2017 Los Angeles Dodgers for the longest losing streak after recording multiple 10-game win streaks earlier in the season. The Dodgers, who had that losing streak in September of that campaign, ended up making it all the way to the World Series.
“I’ve never seen a start of the season where you’re 55 games in and you’ve got two 10-game winners and then a nine-game losing streak,” Happ said before Tuesday’s game, via Yahoo Sports’ Jordan Shusterman. “That’s a lot of crazy stuff to happen in two months.”
The Cubs will wrap up their four-game series with the Pirates on Thursday night before traveling to St. Louis to open a series with the Cardinals on Friday.
While they still have a long way to go, it’s only May after all, and the NL Central race is still ridiculously tight, the Cubs have found a way to win again. That’s a start to getting back on track.
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