Where Will The Cubs Lose Their 10,000th Game?

Our friends -- and I say that exactly in the way it's meant -- at Brew Crew Ball have reminded me this morning that the Cubs are approaching the 10,000th loss in franchise history, and then they get silly:

The Cubs and Brewers meet for the first time in 2014 on April 25-27 at Miller Park. The final game of that series will be the Cubs' 24th of the season. If Chicago somehow manages to open the campaign with 24 consecutive losses, the Sunday game of that series would be loss #10000.

Oh, har de har har. This Cubs team isn't that bad. Is it?

Here's something that might be more realistic:

The two teams go their separate ways for a few weeks after that before reconnecting at Wrigley Field on May 16 for a series involving the Cubs' 42nd, 43rd and 44th games. If the Cubs go 18-23. 19-22 or 20-21 in their first 41 games, then the Brewers will get a shot at handing them their 10,000th loss in this series.

Well, that actually might happen. I personally would rather not see loss number 10,000 (and let's face it, it's going to happen this year, because the Cubs are not going to go 139-23) against the Brewers. But it seems likely that loss could come sometime around mid-May. Just before that home series against the Brewers, the Cubs are in St. Louis for a four-game set. That seems a possibility, as does the two-game series against the Yankees at Wrigley that immediately follows that Milwaukee set.

Loss No. 10,000 in franchise history to the Yankees. Now that would actually be cool.

I should remind our Milwaukee friends that despite the Cubs' poor seasons since 2009, their all-time record entering 2014 is 10,438-9,976, or 462 games over .500. In all of major-league history, only five other teams -- the Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, Cardinals and Red Sox -- are more games over .500 lifetime than the Cubs.

Meanwhile, despite the Brewers' generally decent play over the last several seasons and their 2011 division title, they are overall 3,419-3,738, or 319 games under .500. As you can see at the above link, that ranks ahead of just eight other teams: Mets, Rangers, Mariners, Athletics, Padres, Twins, Orioles and Phillies.

So let's take the long view, shall we? And I'm personally rooting for the Cubs to go 19-0 against the Brewers this year.