Get us in your inbox

Search
Photograph: Erica Gannett

An outlandish and ridiculously early projection for the Cubs' 2016 campaign

Written by
Chris Bourg
Advertising

The Cubs are off to a strong start this season, as they currently sport a 2-0 record and are sitting atop the NL Central. Using a perfectly reasonable sample size of two games in the baseball regular season, we can confidently say that the Cubs will dominate the MLB for the rest of the year. It's simple math, really: just take the stats and information from the first two games they have played so far and extrapolate them over the span of a 162-game season. Using this set of data, we can make the following inferences about how the Cubs season will play out:

Matt Szczur will be a force of nature: If you don't know the name or how to say it, you better look up the pronunciation and get familiar with it because he's going to be taking over baseball this year. In just five at-bats this year he's already hit a double, a home run and racked up four RBIs. At that rate, which he will most certainly sustain over 162 games, he's going to be breaking every single season offensive record in the book. And when that does happen, all we ask is that the record keepers and MVP trophy engravers spell his name right.

Jason Heyward's .111 batting average: So this is what the Cubs get in return for shelling out all that money on their big offseason acquisition? This clearly isn't going to work out. Send him back to that winless team in St. Louis where he belongs.

Kris Bryant can't hit or field: It's bad enough that Bryant is firing blanks on offense, but to be booting balls around the infield and registering the only error on the team this year is worse. This is a troubling trend that will likely continue for the rest of the season—if the first two games are any sure indication (and they are). Looks like it's time to give up on the Kris Bryant experiment and find the next big thing.

Jake Arrieta will give up no runs this season: Based on the reigning NL Cy Young champ's performance last year, this really isn't that outlandish of a proclamation to make. He legitimately may not give up a single run this year. The crazy thing is, his dominant performances have become so commonplace that if this actually happened, Cubs fans wouldn't even bat an eye.

Jon Lester is the bum of the Cubs pitching staff: Sure, he went out and pitched his way to a victory over the Angels on Tuesday night. But he's also the only the Cubs pitcher to give up a run so far this season. Quite frankly, he is a liability in the pitching rotation and you can't have him giving up a single run every outing when the offense is only averaging 7.5 runs per game. It's much more preferable to just send Arrieta out to the mound every game to guarantee a shutout.

The Cubs have the nicest offense in the league: Alternating between six runs on one night and nine runs on another night? The Cubs will blow away the opposition for the rest of the year if they can keep up that kind of offensive pace.

The Cubs will go 162-0 this year: All the data and projections from the first two games point to a perfect season. The Cubs are simply incapable of scoring less runs than their opponent on any given day. This feat may be a little difficult to accomplish given the fact that they have to face a handful of other teams who are also currently projected to go 162-0 this season, but that's why they play the games on the field instead of making wild assumptions based on small sample sizes. Baseball is a funny game like that.

You may also like
You may also like
Advertising