No, it's not the latest hairstyle sported by Harry Styles as he tours the world. Nor is it the latest iteration of Donald's comb-over. Nope. The September Fade is the semi-annual collapse of the Chicago Cubs on the odd years they are actually in contention.
I've
only been following the Cubs since 1968, so I'm hardly an expert. But
they have an unpleasant habit of fading in September. Do I remember
the jokes about the Cubs relocating to the Philippines and renaming
themselves the Manila Folders?
Sadly, yes.
For purposes of juxtaposition, the 2016 Cubs followed up a sizzling August (22 – 6) with a stupendous September, going 17 – 10 as they wrapped up the NL Central division. The previous year, after having embraced the idea they were legitimate contenders, the Cubs also followed up a torrid August with an equally-torrid September (19 – 9), ending the year on an eight-game winning streak.
(You will excuse me for not mentioning that after taking the season series from the New York Mets 7 – 0, they disappeared against them in the National League Championship Series, falling four games to none.)
Even after a slow start in 2017, they caught fire in late-summer, going 16 – 8 in July, 17 – 12 in August and 19 – 9 in—you guessed it—September. In 2018 they managed a still-impressive 16 – 12 record, tying the Milwaukee Brewers for the division lead. (Naturally, they lost game one-hundred sixty-three at home to those same Brewers, managing just three hits in a 3 – 1 loss.)
Following that defeat, the Cubs went on to lose another game—also at home—in a one-game wild card series to the 1927 New York Yank...er, I mean the 2018 Colorado Rockies. The score was 2 – 1, but at least the Cubs totaled six hits.
In a manner of speaking, the immediate future began in 2019. In what was widely seen as a make-it-or-break-it year for Maddon and company, the Cubs played well, ending August with a 73 – 62 record, in second-place just 2.5 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals.
But do you remember September?
The Cubs crashed, going 11 – 16 and losing ten out of their last twelve games (which included a season-high nine-game losing streak).
So, yeah. This isn't new.
Most famously there was 1969. After enjoying a five to nine game divisional lead from mid-May through Labor Day, the Cubs went on to lose seventeen of twenty-five games that September, which included a season-high eight-game losing streak. It was enough to subvert a very healthy divisional lead to the point where the Cubs stood eight games behind the New York Mets by season's end.
In an era where only division winners were invited to participate in the post-season, it was a brutal end to a campaign that had success-starved Cub fans rekindling their belief in Santa Claus.
I hate the Mets to this day. And I always will.
2008. The Cubs were cruising along at a 100-win pace when September struck. They enjoyed a division lead that grew to 10.5 games by the 22nd, despite the Cubs suffering through what was easily the worst month of the season (12 – 12).
It was perhaps fortunate that September had just thirty days.
The good news was that the ninety-seven win Cubs were opening the divisional playoffs against the 84 – 78 Los Angeles Dodgers, who not only held the worst won-loss record of any of the MLB post-season combatants, but the worst road record of any of the five National League post-season entrants.
To Cub fans who hasn't yet surrendered their innocence, this was a sign from God that the Cubs were headed to the World Series. To those of us who had lost our virginity some time ago, this pairing merited only a reserved and distant “Hmmm.”
The Cubs wasted no time in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, losing game one 7 – 2 and game two 10 – 3 at Wrigley—to the second-worst road team in the playoffs. I didn't even bother checking the score for game three. Didn't need to. I knew instinctively they had once again found the cloud in the silver lining.
Unlike other Cubs teams that had suffered a difficult September, the 2008 squad distinguished itself because it had also experienced a difficult October, something the 1984, 1989 and 2003 clubs were also familiar with.
Yes, for the masochistic Cub fan, it was a season to remember.
2023 didn't plumb those depths, but managed to hold several peculiar qualities all its own.
First off, you should know the Cubs held the third-best run differential in the National League for the majority of the season. Their pythagorean won-lost record was 90 – 72, a full seven games above their actual record.
This was going to be a continuation of the second-half success last year's team enjoyed. And with new additions like Cody Bellinger and Dansby Swanson plus the return of Kyle Hendricks, why wouldn't it be?
Read on, dear reader. Read on.
So what went wrong? The Cubs punched well below their weight. They ran notoriously hot and cold. Slumps and injuries held an all-access pass to their locker room.
Jameson Taillon and Drew Smyly appeared in April to be decent-quality fourth and fifth starters, but that didn't quite happen. Taillon's first half was a disaster, and Smyly never got untracked and was relegated to the bullpen.
However good Marcus Stroman was in the first half (and he was Cy Young-nominee good), he tailed off during the Cubs' visit to London and never recovered. (A cartilage-injury to his ribs helped ensure he wouldn't.)
Hendricks arrived in June and was a great help. But the Cubs couldn't score when Hendricks was on the mound. Ten of his twenty-four starts resulted in a no decision, and what usually happened on those occasions was that the bullpen would extend to the opposition the generosity Hendricks himself refused to.
That left Justin Steele. The new guy in town had a breakthrough year and was a deserved candidate for the Cy Young trophy until a couple of late-season starts went south.
Then there was the bullpen. It was a bullpen-by-committee kind of deal, with Adbert Alzolay emerging as the eventual closer. And for the majority of the year he was quite good. But his calendar contained a 'September' too, and he was sidelined at the most critical time of the year.
There were lots and lots of blown save opportunities in September, something that doesn't align well with post-season play. Over the last thirty days, only the Atlanta Braves and Kansas City Royals created more save opportunities (thirteen) than the Cubs' dozen. The Cubs could only convert four.
There's no telling what those eight blown saves (defined as a lead lost in the eighth or ninth inning) did to the club's psyche. But the position players weren't without blame as slumps coursed through the lineup in a highly-democratic fashion.
Swanson, the Cubs big free-agent signing, had a good year defensively but his offensive production was on the weak side. Specifically, he hit just .184 in August (OPS of .662) and .236 in September—not the numbers you're expecting from a triple-digit signing.
Seiya Suzuki rebounded nicely at the end of the year, but could only manage a batting average of .177 in June (with a slugging percentage of .228 and an OPS of .475) and .240 in July (with a less-bad slugging percentage of .350 and an OPS of .660).
Even Bellinger slumped, hitting .226 in May and .250 in June with slugging percentages of .300 each month. But a month-long knee injury hit him in mid-May, so..
He also tailed-off in September.
The lasting picture I have of the 2023 Cubs is that there always seemed to be someone on the IL and/or enmeshed in a deep slump. Suffering from a lack of depth, this was a club that could not afford to be hamstrung by a starting pitcher or positional player or bullpen closer struggling. And yet it was—repeatedly.
The powers that be maintain the Cubs weren't supposed to be contending for a playoff slot, which helps not one iota in picking up the pieces of this broken season. That wasn't the point! They were contending. And they choked.
On the other hand, the Dodgers, Atlanta Braves and Baltimore Orioles won 305 games between them. The Orioles and Dodgers were swept by teams that won (respectively) 90 and 84 games.
(Just for fun, I'll add the 99-win Tampa Bay Rays, who were swept in the wild card round by a 90-win team, also.)
The Braves will likely bow out of their series tonight to a team that also won 90. That's four teams—all substantially better than the Cubs—who went 1 – 11 in October.
Maybe that's the reason we keep watching—the immutable and unexplainable mysteries of sport.
