The Chicago Cubs are NL Central champions for the second straight season, and one MLB analyst says a players-only meeting is to credit for the turnaround.
The Cubs on Wednesday clinched the division with a 5-1 win over the Cardinals, which made them 89-69 on the season. That’s an impressive record considering the Cubs were two games under .500 at the All-Star break. They’re 46-24 in the second half of the season.
In discussing the Cubs’ improvement, MLB Network’s Harold Reynolds revealed on Wednesday that the team held a players-only meeting in June that helped turn around their season.
“What’s interesting about the Cubs is the fact that what turned this around once again was a team meeting. They lost to the Mets 2 out of 3 in New York, and then they had a team meeting — players-only. They’re 57-36 since that meeting,” said Reynolds.
“And that meeting was a lot of folks yelling and screaming: ‘quit worrying about your stats, trying to hit home runs, dogging it. It’s time for us to turn it on and play because our goal is to get back — we’re not going to be defending a crown — we’re not World Series champs as we stand here right now. That’s old news.’
“It was pretty loud speaking. I got that from an inside source,” said Reynolds.
Reynolds may be reporting facts when he says the Cubs held a players-only meeting after their June 12-14 series against the Mets. However, the notion that the meeting turned the team around is more subjective. The Cubs went 11-12 immediately after the meeting before the break. It seems that the turnaround point was the All-Star break, though some with the Cubs may mark that meeting as the turning point.
The thought of meetings being important for the Cubs is significant though, especially when you consider how a previous meeting was lauded as a big reason for them winning the World Series last year.
