ARLINGTON, Texas — The Chicago Cubs beat the Texas Rangers 7-1 on Friday night and locked up their second 10-game winning streak of the season, a milestone they had not reached in a year since 1935. Ian Happ kept his on-base streak alive at 29 games, Michael Busch drove in three runs with a double and the Cubs improved to 27-12, the best record in the majors.
For a club that has already put together two separate runs of 10 wins by May 8, the accomplishment lands in rare company. The last Cubs team to stack multiple 10-game streaks in a season after 1935 was the 2016 championship club, which went on to win 103 games in the regular season. Before this year, the only season in franchise history with more than two such streaks was 1906, when the Cubs had four.
Manager Craig Counsell said the number means the club is doing something rare, but he also pushed the focus back to the game in front of him. He said that if it is broken into small parts, it is just about coming out and playing a good game, and that Friday was a well-rounded one, with the pitching putting pressure on Texas throughout the night. He added that kind of formula has been the recipe for a lot of wins.
The context around the streaks is what makes this start stand out. The Cubs have won 20 of their last 23 games, with three straight losses splitting the two 10-game runs, and they are doing it while stacking production across the lineup and steady work on the mound. That included Ben Brown, who threw four hitless innings in his first start of the season after 12 relief appearances, giving Chicago another clean bridge through the game.
Happ said baseball is full of numbers and records, so when a club has to go back that far in the history book, it is usually a good sign. He called the sentence itself crazy and said the Cubs are just going to keep it rolling. Brown called the two double-digit streaks in one season pretty wild and said it is a credit to everyone in the clubhouse, from the coaches and trainers to the sports staff. He said the team is talented enough to give people goosebumps, and on this night the Cubs Baseball run looked less like a hot streak than a team settling into something bigger.
The next test is whether Chicago can keep the streak from becoming a footnote in a season that is already stacking its own history. The Cubs have been good enough to make the unusual look routine, and that is the kind of pace that changes what everyone else in the National League is chasing.
