The Cubs avoided a sweep in San Francisco thanks to a pair of homers from the most recent team MVP candidate, Patrick Wisdom. Next, they have a 3-game rematch with the Padres. See below for pitching matchup.

The Cubs swept the Padres to climb to a season high 9 games over .500 and to maintain a narrow lead over the Cardinals for first in the NL Central. Next up, they have a four-game series against the San Francisco Giants, who are now first in the NL West thanks in part to the Cubs' victories over the Padres. See below for the weekend's matchups.

The Cubs continued a hot streak by taking two out of three games against Cincinnati over the weekend. Unfortunately, they lost two more main cast members to unusual baseball injuries. David Bote will be out indefinitely with left shoulder injury that looked quite painful--see Cubster's comment for much more insight while everyone awaits official reports. Trevor Williams will also at least miss his start in this series due to an emergency apendectomy. The Cubs will have to do their best in this series with an emergency starter for the opening game and probably lots of Ortega, Wisdom, Sogard, and perhaps the newly added Sergio Alcantara. Those reinforcements face a tough assignment as the Cubs take on the first place San Deigo Padres (34-20). See below for the pitching matchups.

The Cubs completed a sweep in Pittsburgh to raise their record to 27-22 and force a tie for first with the Cardinals. There return home now to take on the 4th-place Cincinnati Reds (22-26) and to build on an eight-and-two stretch. See below for the weekend's matchups.

The Cubs took two out of three from the Cardinals in St. Louis and climbed to 1.5 game out of first place. Meanwhile, the Brewers trail the Cubs by only half a game. The Cubs will have a chance to take on the last place Pirates yet again. The season series stands at five and four in the Cubs' favor heading into the week. The Pirates will be doing their work without Colin Moran, Philip Ervan, and, of course, Ke'Bryan Hayes. The Cubs may miss Willson Contreras, depending on how he recovers from taking a fastball to the wrist from his battery-mate, Kimbrel. Jason Heyward remains on the IL, and team sparkplug Matt Duffy is working around some back pain. See below for the pitching matchups for the series.

The Cubs (22-21) passed the one-quarter mark during the week and take on their division rivals, the first place Cardinals (25-18), for the first time in 2021. The slumping Brewers (21-22) have surrendered the second place spot to the Cubs for the time being. At just over a fourth of the way through the season, the Cubs have just about played to expectations. They've yo-yoed around .500 while getting some pleasant surprises in the early going (Kris Bryant, Jake Arrieta, Craig Kimbrel), and some significant disappointments (Zach Davies, Kyle Hendricks, several hitters).