i can only suspect that the news isn't good. looking at the list of longest NL losing streaks, articulated on page 3 herein, one can see it (sensibly) is rare for good teams to suffer prolonged droughts. but digging into the cub archive from 1970 on, one finds that, even if a seven-game skid doesn't have to mean the end of a team, it does severely stack the deck. five of the ten winning teams and two of the four playoff squads since 1945 have suffered such an event; but, of the 23 teams since 1970 to slide seven consecutively, only 5 posted a winning record in the end.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/img/149/2002/400/since1970.jpg)
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the unvarnished truth is that only ten cub teams in that span have gone over .500 -- what cub fans painfully know to be a small sample size. one has to dig deeper into cub history for winning teams to become plentiful enough to paint a more meaningful picture of winning teams and losing streaks. between 1900 and today, there have been 48 such cub clubs -- and plotting their longest losing streaks against their winning percentage gives some idea of the maximum potential of this club in light of recent events.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/img/149/2002/400/winnerssince1900.jpg)
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only twelve of the 48 winners suffered as many as seven straight losses, and only three of those 12 surpassed a .556 winning percentage -- the equivalent of 90 wins.
taken as the whole this means, on the basis of this losing streak alone, the 2005 squad has something like a 1 in 4 chance of being a winner, and only a very minute chance of reaching 90 wins. if we were to compound this probability with their overall record to this point, i suspect the odds would get yet worse.
so dig in and hunker down, cub fans -- this isn't very likely to be a winning season anymore. but there's always the chance of an unlikely comeback and, barring that... next year.
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