The 2015 Cubs Are On An Historic Run

I have written before of the best two-month run of Cubs baseball I have seen in my lifetime. In 1977, the Cubs went 40-15 in May and June. None of the Cubs playoff teams since 1945 did that; the 1969 team never had a run like that.

That's the best run of any Cubs team since the last pennant year, 1945, when the Cubs went 42-13 from June 15 through August 8 on their way to a 98-win season. Even the 100-win 1935 Cub pennant winners, who won a record 21 straight in September, didn't quite do that. They went 23-3 in September, but with a 15-15 August were 38-18 for the season's final two months. They went 26-8 in July, so July and August 1935 combined were 41-23, close but not quite up to that 40-15 mark from 1977.

We all know that 1977 team collapsed and finished exactly at .500 (and had to lose their last five games to do that!), but this year's Cubs club is headed for a final two months of historic proportions. (For the purposes of this discussion, I'm including this October's four regular-season games in a discussion of "the last two months.")

Here are the Cubs' team records from August 1 through the end of the season for all the clubs that made the playoffs since 1984.

1984: 36-21
1989: 34-23
1998: 28-25
2003: 34-21
2007: 29-28
2008: 32-20

All of those teams had winning marks from August 1 through season's end, but almost all of them struggled at times, too. The 2007 team went 12-16 in August; the 2008 team, the winningest Cubs team since 1945, went 12-12 in September.

Not this year, not so far, anyway. The Cubs are 34-15 since August 1 with 11 games to go, and they were 4-1 the last five games of July. That makes this a 38-16 run since the Phillies sweep at Wrigley.

That's pretty close to that 40-15 run in 1977, and this one is coming at the best possible time. As far as I can tell, the last Cubs team that had a better run than this year's bunch from August 1 through the end of the season was... the 1908 Cubs, who went 44-19 in that span.

Well, you all know how that year wound up. Here's hoping.