Windows in Time: The Cubs Decade-by-Decade

The Cubs of the early twentieth century featured such legendary names as Frank Chance, Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Mordecai Brown. As baseball statistics guru Bill James has pointed out, those Cubs established major-league records for the most wins in one year (1906), two years (1906-1907), three years (1906-1908), four years (1906-1909), five years (1906-1910), six years (1905-1910), seven years (1904-1910), eight years (1904-1911), nine years (1904-1912), and ten years (1904-1913). Each of these records still stands. (The 2001 Seattle Mariners equaled the 1906 Cubs' 116 wins, but they lost ten more games than the Cubs.)

   

FRANK CHANCE

This information gave us the idea to survey the Cubs' performance for each ten-year period in franchise history. 

     Immediately below is the log by decades, which illustrates what we already knew--that after a sustained run of success and even dominance for many years, the Cubs entered a long period in which mediocrity or worse was the norm and respectability or better the exception. From 1876 through 1939, the Cubs (and their forerunners, the White Stockings and Colts) were 1,163 games over the .500 mark. Notwithstanding the Cubs' recent successes, they are 577 games under .500 since 1940. 

 

Years                     W.         L.         Pct.        Championships

1876 - 1879          154       110       .583         N.L. 1876

1880 - 1889          691       395       .636         N.L. 1880, 1881, 1882, 1885, 1886

1890 - 1899          710       654       .521         none

1900 - 1909          879       592       .598         N.L. 1906; World 1907, 1908

1910 - 1919          826       668       .553         N.L. 1910, 1918

1920 - 1929          807       728       .526         N.L. 1929

1930 - 1939          889       646       .579         N.L. 1932, 1935, 1938

1940 - 1949          736       802       .479         N.L. 1945

1950 - 1959          672       866       .437         none

1960 - 1969          735       868       .459         none

1970 - 1979          785       827       .487         none

1980 - 1989          735       821       .472         Div. 1984, 1989

1990 - 1999          739       813       .476         none

2000 - 2009          807       811       .499         Div. 2003, 2007, 2008

2010 - 2019          817       803       .504         World 2016, Div. 2017

 

When we review every ten-year stretch of franchise history, we find the period that Bill James pointed to and also a stretch in the nineteenth century--the days of Cap Anson--in which the club's winning percentage was even higher (while the total number of wins was lower because of shorter schedules).

     The first ten-year stretch in Cubs annals to produce a losing record was the period from 1939 to 1948. From then on, every ten-year stretch through 2009 produced a losing record--with the single exception of the .502 mark achieved between 1967 and 1976. 

    

ERNIE BANKS

The Cubs' worst ten-year run of all time was from 1953 through 1962. It certainly was no reflection on Ernie Banks that these were the first ten years of his career. Few if any players ever performed so brilliantly for such bad ballclubs and before so many empty seats as Mr. Cub, who was an All-Star every year from 1955 through 1962 and won back-to-back Most Valuable Player awards in 1958 and 1959.  

     How bad would the Cubs have been in those days without Ernie? One shudders even to imagine it, but former White Sox manager Jimmie Dykes summed it up nicely. "Without Ernie Banks," Dykes remarked, "the Cubs would finish in Albuquerque."

 

Years                     W.         L.         Pct.        Notes

1878 - 1887          623       335       .650         Six seasons over .600

1903 - 1912          980       533       .648         Worst season = .594

1904 - 1913          984       542       .645         Eight seasons over .600

1953 - 1962          652       895       .422         Best season = .481

 

Chicago Cubs year-by-year history on Baseball-Reference.com

 

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