Is there any benefit or harm to clinching a division title early?
The Cubs tied for the fifth-fastest division clinching by games since 1996 (the first full season of the wild-card era). Cubs fans will probably take a fatalistic view of this stat, per the Elias Sports Bureau: Of the seven teams to clinch the earliest since 1996 (the first non-strike season in the wild-card format), two made the World Series, but only the the 1998 Yankees won it all.
This may simply be a product of baseball being a sport in which the best team doesn’t always win, given the sport’s playoff structure.