NEWSLETTER
The 2017 Cubs were not known as the Comeback Cubs or the Cardiac Cubs or whatever else you may have wanted to call the 2015 and 2016 squads, which seemed to have a peculiar penchant for coming back late in games. To the contrary, it “felt” like the late-game story for the 2017 Cubs was that the 8th inning was a brutal and cruel beast, designed only to torment the Cubs and their bullpen.
But that’s all just a matter of the feeling that develops over the course of the year, and not necessarily reflective of the whole season. The Cubs did have some crazy comebacks in 2017, including the time they came back from down 9-0 to the Reds to tie things up (though they ultimately lost), or the time they put up a three spot in the 9th inning to beat the Nationals back in June.
The comebacks that really stick with me, though, were the ones that came very early in the season, all the way back in April. They stick with me not necessarily because they were individually historic, but instead because the Cubs did it THREE GAMES IN A ROW.
A little mathifying says that the odds that a team would win all three of those games after being down by those amounts is about 1 in 6500.
