There is an old adage in baseball that goes “you can’t win a division in April but you sure can lose one”. Basically, this means that no matter how hot you start the year, there are still five months to go, and you are going to have to win meaningful games in August and September. On the flip side, a team can start so poorly that they end up digging themselves a hole that is too big to come back from. This is why every team tries to get off to a fast start and position themselves nicely for the grueling 162 game season. However, sometimes that is not possible and the best a team can do is try to weather the storm and keep themselves from losing the Division in April.
The latter scenario appears to be what the Cubs have been faced with in 2018. No matter how you slice it, the Cubs have had a difficult April on many fronts yet stand just one game behind the Division-leading Cardinals as they start play on April 28th. In fact, the Cubs are the only team in baseball without either a three-game winning streak or a three-game losing streak. They have hovered around .500 and continuously battled through adversity for the first month of the season.
The fact that the Cubs are where they are is truly amazing considering the obstacles they have had to deal with. Some of those obstacles include: starting the season with a 10 game road trip, horrible weather conditions that have led to 5 rainouts already, a DL stint from their All Star 1st baseman, Anthony Rizzo, a bad start to the season from Rizzo, who entered Saturday’s game hitting only .176, and a beanball to the head of their perennial MVP candidate, Kris Bryant, which led to him missing the better part of 5 games. Despite all of these issues, the Cubs have kept their heads above water and positioned themselves nicely to make another run at a Division Championship and October Baseball
