The Chicago Cubs recorded two separate ten-game winning streaks in the same season and later lost ten straight games. Elias notes this combination has occurred only once before in baseball history, when the 2017 Los Angeles Dodgers also had a ten-game winning streak in June and another in July. That Dodgers team later lost eleven straight games early in September and during a stretch where it lost 16 of 17. Despite the slump, the Dodgers had previously built a large division lead, which shrank to single digits while they remained 9.0 games ahead. The 2017 Dodgers finished 104-58, won postseason series, and reached the World Series. Similar patterns of strong and weak stretches have also appeared in other seasons, including the 1987 Brewers.
"According to Elias, it has in fact happened only one other time in baseball history (and the Cubs have pulled it off before the end of May!). The 2017 Los Angeles Dodgers had a ten-game winning streak in June of that year, and another in July (that one actually reached eleven). That same club lost eleven games in a row early in September, and did so as part of a stretch where they lost 16 of 17. Yowsa."
"The thing about that 2017 Dodgers club, though, is that they also had another nine-game winning streak, and THREE six-game winning streaks. By the time that losing streak rolled around, they'd built such a gargantuan lead in the AL West that, at the conclusion of losing 16 of 17, the Dodgers' lead in the division had shrunk all the way ... to single digits. Yeah. They were still 9.0 games up."
"In other words, the 2017 Dodgers were a monster of a team. They would go on to win 104 games, dominate in the NLDS, dominate in the NLCS, and then take the trash-can-banging Astros to seven games in the World Series. I would, uh, take all that for the 2026 Chicago Cubs. History can repeat for these two clubs, the only ones to have two ten-game winning streaks and a ten-game losing streak in the same season, and I'd be a happy camper."
"I should point out that if we zoom out a bit and away from the streaks, specifically, then there have been three other instances of teams having both a 20-3 stretch and a 2-14 stretch in the same season, per Mike Gianella. One of those was that same 2017 Dodgers club that we'd love the Cubs to emulate. The other two were the 1987 Brewers, who finished 91-71 (missing the postseason in the pre-Wild Card days),"
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