After another dominant weekend of work from the Chicago Cubs’ newly formed and stabilized bullpen, I saw a lot of posts and comments along the lines of “The Cubs have a ridiculous bullpen ERA since X date” and so on. All of them were incredibly impressive and entertaining.

But because I’m an avowed fan of arbitrary cutoff dates, I became curious: How far back on the calendar could you go and still claim that the Cubs still have the best ERA in baseball since some very early date?

It turns out that the answer is really far away!

The deadline is not in August. Not in July. Not even in June! It is May 30th!

What I’m saying is that the Cubs’ bullpen ERA is an MLB best at 2.76 since May 30. The Cubs have had the best bullpen in baseball for nearly three months in a row now. That’s crazy! But true!

OK, so there are plenty of caveats if you want them. First, the cut-off is completely arbitrary. But I’ve already said that. Second, ERA isn’t the only – or even necessarily the best – statistic for evaluating how good a bullpen actually is. But hey, it’s somewhat based on results!

I just think it’s nice, and even if you allow for some reservations, it underscores that the Cubs have built a damn good bullpen. It’s a shame, though, that it took a few months of struggles, injuries, pitch tweaking, role definition, etc. for them to get there. For the entire season, the Cubs bullpen’s ERA is just 3.62 – the fifth-best in baseball – which underscores just how bad those first two months have been.

A bit of extreme nonsense, just for fun: Since June 27th – almost two months ago – the Cubs bullpen’s ERA is an absurd 1.90, AND second place is 2.70(!), AND there is only one other team that is even below 3.16. The Cubs bullpen has not only been the best in baseball since June 27th, it is on a whole other planet. (Note that Jorge Lopez made his Cubs debut on June 28, which is interesting.)

We hope that this extreme bullpen success continues largely into 2025, right? So this time in April and May? (Ensuring that Hector Neris’ 2025 option does not vest was a good start…. )