Chicago Cubs: Acceptance of new Central Division order could be key to turnaround

The Chicago Cubs put on a good showing in Saturday’s 9-1 crushing of the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium. It was a performance reminiscent of the team’s outings earlier in the season where a potent and versatile offense made things nice and easy for their pitching staff.

The first-half Cubs looked to have the kind of special magic about them reserved for teams destined for big things later in the postseason.

That magic, however, only comes in brief glimpses now. The once-elite offense has been flat-lining overall since late June. A stressed and strained Cubs pitching staff has shown signs of the wear and tear of the added pressure placed on them.

The magical Milwaukee Brewers

The baseball magic, now, seems to be swirling in the air over the Cubs’ division rival Milwaukee Brewers, who now hold a five-game lead over second place Chicago in the NL Central Division after being down by as many as 6.5 games.

The mojo motoring the Brewers’ success has been crazy. There’s no doubt that they have a very good team and very good coaching behind the team. The Brewers’ whole setup is historically top notch. But this recent 47-16 run of theirs — the best in franchise history– pushes the boundaries of baseball logic.

Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic describes some of the divinely magical Brewers happenings in a recent piece:

“They’ve had multiple home runs that have hit the top of the fence and gone out. They’ve seemingly taken advantage of every defensive miscue and scored runs in all sorts of different ways. On Friday, they threw the potential score-tying run out at home to end the game. On Saturday, they erased three deficits before taking the lead for good late, once again taking advantage of sloppy defense. They even had a flyout called back on a pitch-timer violation, then the batter hit a home run on the next pitch.”

The not-magical Chicago Cubs

The Cubs, meanwhile, have been significantly less magical, sporting a 14-14 record in their last 28 games and looking very much like a team in desperate need of putting things back together.

“They’re playing well,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell recently said of his former team. “I don’t really spend much time thinking about that. We have five more games where we can control their outcomes. Time spent worrying on them, other than that, is not helpful.”

Focusing on reality

The Cubs have a five-game series with the Brewers starting August 18 at Wrigley Field. The series is shaping up as, possibly, a last gasp shot at bringing the high-flying Brewers down– assuming their lead isn’t well beyond five games by the time they begin the series.

“There’s times where you see it and you want to have some awareness in terms of where things are at,” shortstop Dansby Swanson recently told reporters, referring to Milwaukee’s run to the top of the NL Central. “But what we can control is what we’re doing on a daily basis. In order to get to where we want to get to, you have to win games. So it’s not about what they’re doing. The more you spend time focusing on them, you’re taking energy from being where we need to be.”

That’s certainly sound logic from a player’s perspective, although human nature dictates that most on the team are scoreboard watching and suffering the on-field consequences of the added pressure.

At this point, everyone should just settle into the idea that the Cubs’ postseason path involves a Wild Card slot and ease the pedal off the Brewers chase.

If the season were to end right now, the Cubs would hold the top Wild Card spot, 2.5 games ahead of the San Diego Padres and 4.5 games ahead of the New York Mets.

It would’ve been nice to be a division winner and travel that slightly less complicated path through the playoffs– and that may still be possible. But accepting reality, and forgetting how roughly they were overtaken in the standings, might be a powerfully calming remedy for what is unquestionably still a very good team.

Source: https://www.chicitysports.com/chicago-cubs-milwaukee-brewers-counsell?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=chicago-cubs-milwaukee-brewers-counsell