Cubs bullpen dazzles and offense surges ahead of Sunday's game vs. Pirates

The Chicago Cubs head into Sunday's contest at PNC Park against the Pittsburgh Pirates carrying two of the more eye-catching recent stretches in the National League — one from their bullpen, one from their offense — with Jameson Taillon set to take the mound opposite Braxton Ashcraft, per Yahoo Sports.

What happened

Lineups for Sunday's Cubs-Pirates game were not available at the time Yahoo Sports published its preview, so the full picture of who takes the field remains incomplete. Check back for updates as the game approaches.

What is available, however, is a fairly compelling case that the Cubs are playing some of the better baseball in the sport right now — and the numbers behind that case are worth sitting with.

Why it matters

The Cubs are 2nd in the NL Wild Card standings, sitting +1.0 relative to the cut line. That margin is not enormous, and every series between now and the end of the regular season carries weight. A club running out a dominant bullpen and a historically productive offense in the same week is, at minimum, making life easier on itself.

The Wild Card position is the operative lens here. The Cubs are eliminated from the division race — 14 games back in the NL Central — so the path forward runs entirely through the Wild Card. That makes run prevention and run production not just interesting statistics but the actual machinery of their October hopes.

The numbers

The bullpen deserves the first look, because the last three games have been genuinely unusual. Per Yahoo Sports, Cubs relievers threw 10 innings, allowed 5 hits, 2 runs, 1 earned run, 0 walks, and struck out 12 batters. The resulting ERA over that stretch: 0.91. The WHIP: 0.500. A WHIP of 0.500 means the bullpen allowed, on average, one baserunner every two innings — a figure that belongs more in a simulation than a late-July pennant chase.

The offense has been doing its part as well. Saturday's 11-run outburst pushed the Cubs to 534 runs on the season, which works out to 5.13 per game, per Yahoo Sports. Projected across a full season, that pace lands at 832 runs — which would be the second-highest single-season total for the franchise since 1970, per the same report. The only Cubs team to top it in that window scored 855 runs in 2008.

That 832-run pace is the kind of number that earns a raised eyebrow. Pace figures have a way of softening as rosters wear down in August, and Yahoo Sports presents this as context rather than forecast. But it does tell you that this offense has been doing something structurally different from most of the league, and that Saturday was not an aberration so much as a continuation.

The Cubs are also 25-11 since June 10, the best record in the National League over that span, per Yahoo Sports. They trail only the Boston Red Sox — 26-11 over the same stretch — for the best record in all of baseball during that window. Roughly six weeks of elite-level performance is long enough to call it a trend rather than a hot streak.

Where the club stands

The Cubs sit at 89-73 (.549), 2nd in the NL Central, 14 games back in the division, and on a one-game winning streak entering Sunday. Their Wild Card rank of 2nd, with a +1.0 margin over the cut line, means they are in — but not comfortably enough to stop watching the standings.

After Sunday's game in Pittsburgh, the schedule turns to a two-game set in St. Louis against the Cardinals. David Peterson is the probable starter Monday against Matthew Liberatore, with Colin Rea lined up Tuesday against Michael McGreevy. The Cardinals series will offer a cleaner read on where the Cubs stand relative to a division rival that will also be fighting for positioning in the final weeks.

Is there a historical footnote here?

There is, and it is a good one. Yahoo Sports notes that 30 years ago on July 26, 1996, the Cubs hit five home runs — from Brian McRae, Sammy Sosa, Tyler Houston, Leo Gomez, and Jose Hernandez — and beat the Colorado Rockies 17-4 at Coors Field. The report also flags a small coincidence: the 17-4 final was identical to the Cubs' winning score cited in the previous day's history item, though the two games were separated by many years.

The 1996 game is trivia, not prophecy. But it does serve as a reminder that this franchise has occasionally found large offensive numbers to be well within its range — a tradition the current offense, running at a 5.13-runs-per-game clip, seems temperamentally suited to carry forward.

What we don't know yet

The most immediate unknown is the lineup. Neither team had submitted its batting order at the time Yahoo Sports published the preview, so questions about who starts, who rests, and how the Cubs deploy their bullpen after Taillon remain open. Given the bullpen's recent workload — 10 innings over three games — how the usage shakes out Sunday is a reasonable thing to watch, though the preview does not address that directly.

It is also worth noting that pace figures, however striking, are projections. The 832-run pace is a mathematical extrapolation of 534 runs through the games played; it is not a forecast, and Yahoo Sports presents it as context rather than prediction.

What to watch

The obvious thread to follow Sunday is whether Taillon can give the Cubs length, which would allow the bullpen — fresh off that 0.91 ERA stretch — to work in shorter, higher-leverage stints rather than absorbing innings out of necessity. The Cubs' Wild Card margin of +1.0 is real but thin, and the Cardinals series beginning Monday will quickly reframe whatever happens in Pittsburgh.

Check back for lineup updates as first pitch approaches.