{"id":502819,"date":"2026-01-02T15:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T15:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/502819\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T15:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T15:19:11","slug":"5-bold-predictions-for-the-2026-cubs-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/502819\/","title":{"rendered":"5 bold predictions for the 2026 Cubs"},"content":{"rendered":"

In some years, I post an article toward the end of the year revisiting my bold predictions for the Cubs for that season.<\/p>\n

Why didn\u2019t I do that in 2025? Well\u2026 here are my five bold predictions for the year just completed.<\/a> I got close on one of these, at least. The Cubs did win 92 games, as I predicted, but didn\u2019t win the NL Central. The rest? Eh\u2026 not so much.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I persist. Here are five bold predictions for the Chicago Cubs for 2026. Clearly, I\u2019ve given away one of these by the photo at the top of this post. They\u2019re not in any particular order.<\/p>\n

Sh\u014dta Imanaga will rebound from his rough 2025 and make the NL All-Star team<\/p>\n

This bold prediction was going to be \u201cthe Cubs will sign Tatsuya Imai,\u201d but, as you know, he signed with the Astros on New Year\u2019s Day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And so, I decided to go with a solid year from the Cubs\u2019 Japanese left-hander. He\u2019ll figure out what went wrong in 2025 \u2014 and be healthy all year \u2014 and will return to his 2024 All-Star form that landed him fifth place in Cy Young voting that year.<\/p>\n

Daniel Palencia will post 40 saves<\/p>\n

This is not only bold for this year, it\u2019d be bold for just about any year. Only two Cubs relievers have had 40 or more saves in a season, and both of those players cleared 50 \u2014 Randy Myers (53 in 1993) and Rod Beck (51 in 1998). And those were both more than a quarter century ago. No Cubs pitcher has even had 30 saves in a season since Wade Davis (32 in 2017).<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Palencia posted 22 saves in 2025, and all of those came in a period of just 90 team games (May 21 to Sept. 2), and he had only three blown saves all year.<\/p>\n

Presuming he\u2019s healthy, I don\u2019t see why 40 saves couldn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

Pete Crow-Armstrong will have a 40\/40 season<\/p>\n

PCA was on pace to do this in 2025. The Cubs played their 81st game of 2025 June 26 in St. Louis. PCA had 21 home runs and 24 steals through 81 team games.<\/p>\n

Well, you know what happened. PCA did get to 3o\/30 (plus 30+ doubles), but he hit only 10 home runs with 11 steals in the Cubs\u2019 final 81 games.<\/p>\n

A year older and more experienced, I believe he can take his game to the next level.<\/p>\n

Michael Busch will become only the second Cubs left-handed hitter to have a 40 HR season<\/p>\n

You read that right. Billy Williams hit 42 home runs in 1970. He\u2019s the only Cubs LH hitter to hit 40 or more in a season. Kyle Schwarber is second on that list with 38 in 2019.<\/p>\n

Williams also hit 37 in 1972 and 34 in 1965. The latter figure matches Busch\u2019s total from 2025.<\/p>\n

Busch really came on in the second half, too, hitting 21 in the team\u2019s final 82 games. That implies he could hit 40 in a full season.<\/p>\n

For that matter, no Cub has hit 40 or more home runs in a season at all since Derrek Lee had 46 in 2005. The team, as they say, is due.<\/p>\n

The Cubs will win 92 games and the NL Central<\/p>\n

I\u2019m gonna go with this for the second year in a row. Maybe this time it\u2019ll work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In some years, I post an article toward the end of the year revisiting my bold predictions for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,52175,4245,161,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-502819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-chicago-cubs-commentary-and-analysis","12":"tag-chicagocubs","13":"tag-cubs","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115826180982022092","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502819","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=502819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}