{"id":248911,"date":"2025-08-15T04:10:44","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T04:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/248911\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T04:10:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T04:10:44","slug":"the-short-porch-takes-a-look-at-the-cubs-month-of-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/248911\/","title":{"rendered":"The Short Porch takes a look at the Cubs\u2019 month of June"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Cubs will enter July with a homestand against the Cleveland Guardians and St. Louis Cardinals, but the lead they have in the division has shrunk from the lead they had heading into June. They entered June 1 with a three-game lead over the Cardinals, a five and a half game lead over the Brewers and a seven and a half game lead over the Reds. They\u2019ll enter July with all three of those teams having made up ground in June. They now have just a two game lead over Milwaukee, two and a half game lead over St. Louis and a five and a half game lead over Cincinnati. You can see the division tightening in FanGraph\u2019s playoff odds:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">While the Cubs\u2019 playoff odds aren\u2019t that different from the last day of May (83.5 percent) to the last day of June (83.1 percent) everyone else\u2019s odds have gone up, well, except the Pirates, but that\u2019s a post for another day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The same schedule concerns that existed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bleedcubbieblue.com\/2025\/6\/12\/24448052\/cubs-series-losses-short-porch\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the last time I took a look at the Cubs record<\/a> persisted through June. Specifically, the Cubs have been very good against teams who most likely won\u2019t be playing in October and have continued to struggle in series against teams they will need to beat in October. Since June 12 the Cubs have won their series against the Pirates, split two games with the Brewers, split a four-game series with the Cardinals, and dropped two of three against the Astros and Mariners.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">They\u2019ll start their homestand facing off against a sub-.500 Cleveland Guardians team tomorrow, before the Cardinals come to town over the holiday weekend. Then the Cubs will face off against a sub-.500 Twins team and then heading to the Bronx for three games against the AL East-leading Yankees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">It\u2019s a real glass half full, glass half empty situation. On the one hand, the Cubs maintained their lead in the division while their best starter, Sh\u014dta Imanaga, was on the injured list. But they still lead the NL Central and have a six-game homestand on the horizon. The Cubs have been better at home this year, with a 25-13 record at the Friendly Confines. On the other hand, the Cubs may need to invest some of their prospect capital in trades if they want to bring in a pitcher who can help the team compete more effectively against the top of the league. That\u2019s a big potential investment in a team that hasn\u2019t won a series against a team who\u2019s over .500 since April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cubs will enter July with a homestand against the Cleveland Guardians and St. Louis Cardinals, but the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[5,136,4544,843,59,4280,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-248911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-brewers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-brewers","10":"tag-chicago-cubs-essays","11":"tag-milwaukee","12":"tag-milwaukee-brewers","13":"tag-milwaukeebrewers","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115030827661384186","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}