Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Where does the Cubs' 14-game home win streak stand in the club's history?

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Mark Grote discussed the Cubs’ 14-game home winning streak.

Rahimi Harrison Grody We are the best show in this town to have the coach and or quarterback sit right here. Because we're here for a good time. We are here for a good time. We're fun. We're funny. We're serious sometimes.

Sometimes we cry. Sometimes we laugh. Like, this is perfect. If you wanted a high chance of a drink spilled all over the studio, we are definitely repeated. Middays 10 to 2. Maybe we're the show for you. On 104 3, the score.

Things just noted. Two down. 10th inning. The atmosphere is incredible. And the pitch on the way. Inside, Cubs win the ball game. The Cubs have won another one. Listen to this crowd. Straight walked in the series against Cincinnati. Yeah, we love to hear Pat Hughes and Ron Cumer on the call. Grady's jamming out. That is courtesy of the Northwestern Medicine Cubs. Radio Network. Do we bring it back? I feel like we haven't done it this season.

That's the Lawrence Holmes special. Lawrence is out of town. Yeah. Yeah, we'll work on it. Maybe we do an armed signal and then we do it together. Like we could try it right now. Okay, so Northwestern Medicine Cubs Radio Network. That was nice. A little act you guys doing here. I like it. That is Mark Grady. I'm Laylorimi. We are here getting you ready for day baseball. Cubs and Reds at 120 at Wrigley. can they make it 15 in a row? And the game had a lot of twist and turns last night. 312, 644, 67, 67 is our number. Derek joins us from Bowling Brook.

Hi, Derek. Hello there, Derek. Is he here? How's it going? There he is. Hey. What's going on, guys? Hey, man.

Yeah, what's happening? Nothing. Hey, I was calling it because I wanted to give great counsel his flowers, man. Because if you remember, it was a basically loaded and Bush was up. pitch where, you know, Bush wanted to take, but they didn't give him the challenge. And it was a three-one count at the time that it happened. And that's when counsel came out, and he argued as well. I wanted to give counsel his flowers because that argued that he did threw that

picture off. Because that very next pitch that the picture threw, damn near hit Bush. And that won the game. You know what? I think you're on to something, Derek, because as, we mentioned earlier, I think there have been some very good bullpen decisions that Craig counsel has made, especially in this past homestand. We talked about him.

But yeah, he comes out there because the argument at that very last at bat in the 10th inning was that, and I think, you know, to add to that, the crowd was on 10. And then Bush wanted the challenge. The timing wasn't there as we saw. We could see it play out in real time. The beauty is now that the umpires have the opportunity to go out and look at that video themselves and see and double check. Ian Hap talked to us about that the other day,

even after the game. And then Bush goes out there and then Craig goes out there too. And you could tell that Craig didn't want to get ejected in that moment. But there was a come on man type of discussion that was going on right before it. And even if it disrupted the timing a little bit, it was enough at that point to help the Cubs win because the bases were loaded. Yeah, I don't know if I buy that Brock Burke, the pitcher, that caused him to be more rattled in that spot.

He was coaching Illinois State football. Oh, yeah. That's a different Brock. That is Brock of the SPAC. We still got to talk about that championship game a little bit. That was not his finest hour. I got emotionally attached to that game. Which is very moving to me, by the way, as an ISU alumnus.

Hey, I'm a public school girl. I go with the state institutions. Linae, Illinois State. Hell yeah. We're all about it. But yeah, I think actually in that spot, a guy and obviously the highest of leverage situation, Brock Burke, to be able to take a couple of deep breaths in that scenario, I think actually probably was more helpful to him or in theory should have been.

But one way or another, Brock Burke was rattled throughout that ad bat for some reason. Terry Francona rolling the dice just a little bit to load the bases in that spot. Like it's always a weird thing, but I get what he was doing with a matchup with Michael Bush. I probably would have done the same thing, but it was a terrific. bat for Michael Bush to take those bad pitches. Well, and don't forget the call was 3-0. You know, goes to 3-1 on that strike that was argued.

And then, no, sure, sure thing. Right is right. And another ball. Walk off, walk, shrimp. In the heat of the moment, did you think that Michael Bush had been decisive in his move to ask for the replay? Because I didn't. I didn't.

I thought he looked hesitant. Okay. But maybe it's because I was biased. You know? Like, I'm like, well, that was enough time. ask for that right there. Right. But I also, I also had the count in mind.

You know, of course, of course you're going to ask that question when the counts three. Right. It should be a no-brainer. I think it's just tough for, like, guys are still getting confident in knowing where they should do it and where they shouldn't, when they should and when they shouldn't. So I think there's always, like PCA the other day. Yeah. Had a hilarious moment with the umpire where he starts to do it and that hovers it over his

head and the umpire kind of looks at him, are you doing this or not? And PCA starts laughing. and PCA throughout that entire bat was smiling because of that moment with the umpire. I'm just glad they're able at this point to have fun with it because as we know previously, it wasn't fun to begin with. And everybody's like,

well, we don't want to be embarrassed and all this stuff. And then Ian Hav gave us some really good insight. I think we should get into it tomorrow a little bit. I know we got the shorty today. BD.N. have talked about how it's just depersonalizing a lot of this. You can go to the tape.

And then it's like, oh, yeah, maybe I was off there a little bit. but everybody gets to adjust. Not just batters, not just pitchers, not just catchers, but the umpires get to as well. So they also get the benefit of being able to adjust to what they're seeing. And maybe they were underestimating their power in this a little bit or their ability to be able to do so.

Amen to that. And like one thing that I never have liked about baseball is like every single caught-looking strike, except for the absolute no-doubts, you'll get the player making comments to the umpire, or staring at the umpire, or you get the chirping from the dugouts and all of that stuff at the very least has been quelled, if not eliminated. Well, and I'm sorry, but it just makes it more inaccurate when you can't measure the emotion

that you've got and everybody's fired up. Do you love it? Yes, but you also want a well-called consistent, most importantly, strikes on. What's going on, right? Well, to Grotie's point about the kind of like dying down now of like the whole like argument thing because of ABS, the, the chirp. The chirping, less chirping, chirping, chirp, chirp, is...

It's impossible to not say. There's still like a mini... A mini version that goes on, and it's very interesting because when it's early in a game, I've noticed particularly listening to Pat and Ron here on 104 through the score, that there's been descriptions of Cubs players

and opposing team hitters. When it's early in a game, they might shoot a look at an ump. Like, I'm not going to use this challenge right now, but I'm looking at you. I didn't like that call. And then if you're the Yompeer's like, go out, challenge it then, man. Go ahead, hot shot.

So it's like, you don't like my call. You can stare at, don't stare at me. Go ahead. Hit your little ABS system, pal. That's right. So it's like a new little version of like a mini-gamemanship. You know, I think. Go ahead.

Why do I have the feeling that that at bat would end in a strikeout swinging for Mark Roddy? Oh, like they would appeal to the first place, umpire to the third base umpire. Let's just get this over with. Mark, Mark's back goes forward by a half an inch and it's like strikeout swinging. I would be the guy tripping. I respect the umpire. You'd be the umph though. You would it be the guy chirping.

Grody would be the oom. Come on. Bring it. There is no cloud outside and you're going to get a struck by lightning today. Why would I want to stir up trouble? That's not my thing. I don't like doing that. Did you? I'm going to pretend like I didn't hear that. I'm just going to strike it from the record. I'm saving all fights until crossed down next week. Oh yeah. You are really anticipating a, this is something. They go down. I made the dumb mistake of asking people to. not fight. And then we just got a slew of text messages that were essentially like, no, we're

starting fights. And I'm like, well, I was way off here. Samsonite. I was way off. Sorry, guys. Go on. Forgive me forever even attempting to ask, who am I to control hundreds of people, huh? Huh? Who am I to control myself at times, frankly? So, sorry, y'all. Get yourself together, woman. My bad friends, going back to what I wanted to talk to you about. Yes, yes. I just, and this not scientifically collected evidence at all. This is me observing what I remember about one of the things I like the most about the 2016 team. Oh, please, yes. So the best 36 game starts.

This is before last night's game. This is after the one the night before last. The Cubs began at 24 and 12 this year. The best 36 game start was 2016 at 27 and 9. And they continued that the entire season, as we know. They ran away with the division. They won the division, what, with three weeks to spare or something insane in the regular season. But what I

liked about that team a lot was not just how they found ways to win. That was established. But the two out hitting that happened a lot in the bottom of the lineup. Addison Russell, I felt like had a pretty good year when it came to that particularly. But I wanted to get your thoughts on it because during this stretch, just this stretch of

15 straight wins at Wrigley, seeing what they've done, when all the 2016 discussion is aligning with this, that's what I remembered and just wanted to bounce off of you because you were there. Yeah, no, the two out hits was a real thing. I think another thing that in 2016 was a very real thing

was the add-on runs, which turned into a year of dominant, dominant run differential. The Cubs had in baseball, from the beginning, the best run differential. The difference is, is the Cubs were blowing teams out back then. There was, they

didn't need the late heroics. As a matter of fact, the Cubs that year had a 252 run differential. 808 runs allowed. Jesus. 252 run. I remember it being big, but that is, that's disturbing. It was massive.

So I'm a little careful not to do the exact comp to that. And the Cubs have had some nice add-on run moments, but the stretch that they are existing in right now is pretty unique. I thought about because it came up last night that the 14th straight win at Wrigley Field, that's the first. They've matched what they did in the year 2008. Under Lou Pinella, Lu Pina's second trip to the playoffs,

where you had DeRosa and D. Lee and Alfonso Soriano, my guy, Ramos Ramirez, Giovanni Soto was on that team. Koske Fukadomei, your guy, Ryan Tario. Oh, yes, the riots. Lofontano was on that team as well, and they were pretty relentless with a nice mix of contact and power on that team. So I probably lean a little bit more towards the 2008 Cubs, which was an excellent dominant baseball team for Lou Pinell and the Cubs.

And, of course, ended poorly against the Dodgers, just like it had the previous year against Arizona. I am not embittered by it by any stretch of the imagination that the Cubs didn't win a playoff game in two years in 07 and 08. I don't think about that anymore. I don't blame you for still being upset about that. That makes perfect sense. I just think in the meantime when I was seeing the 2016 numbers that were coming up,

I was like, ah, you know what that team did? That reminds me of this. Well, the record for sure. For sure. I don't know. The Matt Boyd thing. I know we didn't. It happened after our show.

It happened during your show yesterday. Yeah. You were on with Russ Dorsey. I don't know how much more. Like at some point you get to critical mass. You're talking about one, two, and three outside of Edward Cabrera. Like one, two. Like poor Edward Cabrera.

Like I said, wrap that man a bubble wrap. Well, the Cubs are going to have to keep scoring seven runs a game. You know what I mean? If they're like, honestly. unless there's some magic where every button push this year just works and there are seasons like that. Knock on wood. Knock on the wood behind you. Here we go.

On the wood right there. But right now, it's just a fog because really the only solution that anybody can come up with right this second is Javier Assad. That's it. Javier Assad was part of an original plan, so I don't hate the idea. No, of course. That's the first guy. Of course. It's Javier Assad.

You should be the first man up. You should fill in for Matthew Boyd. but they do have to continue to look for more solutions in starting pitching, whether eventually making a trade or hoping that you can get somebody from the minor league system to come up and do things, but there just aren't a lot of healthy arms right now. I was laughing at 847's text during the Mully and Haw show that came down an hour ago. Yes. I was at a little league game when the Boyd News came across,

and the seven dads around me all had different ideas on what a meniscus actually is. Oh, God. It's just a threat. A meniscus is a threat. Anytime your knee hurts, it's like, oh, you better hope it's not the meniscus. You don't even know it's torn until days later. It's a knee. It's a left knee, right?

That's what the... It is interesting how we have gotten to the point where we just assume that everybody knows exactly what a meniscus is instead of saying that it's meniscus on his left knee. But I was doing it yesterday. If only there was a tool where we could look things up and find answers and information. Tell me more. Ah, yes, it's my vast collection of Encyclopedia Britannicas. I bet you had those books growing up on yourself at home.

We had the world book growing up. Oh, that huge, massive... It took up a wall at the house. Yeah. Remember those books at the library they used to have? Like just all those books on the table. Libraries are still a thing. And you can check out books electronically.

It's fantastic. I haven't walked into a library in decades. You should. I always like that, but you can't get a cough. Can you get a coffee at a library? You can bring it in. Really? Oh.

Your microphone. is quit this segment. We got to go. We got to talk about the White Sox coming up next. You had a conversation with John Paul Morosi that I think is worth everybody's time when it comes to the outlook for Yee White Sox. Even though last night was a bummer yesterday, we'll discuss it next.