Somehow, the Cubs were not buried by an avalanche of injuries.
They didn’t wipe out during a monthlong slump that dropped them from the top of the division to a .500 team. They didn’t watch the Brewers run away with the NL Central even earlier than usual.
The Cubs survived the first half of the season, a dozen games north of .500 and in playoff position as the All-Star break comes to a close.
But they’ve got bigger things in mind than just surviving.
“We’re OK with where we’re at,” outfielder Michael Conforto said last week. “We’re still hungry to play better. Luckily, we had two 10-game winning streaks before going on the 10-game losing streak and not hitting, and we gave ourselves a little buffer.
“But we’re still kind of unhappy with where we’re at, still looking to get better, and we feel like we haven’t played up to our potential yet.”
The Cubs finished the first half well, going 20-8 in their final 28 games before the break.
Though their injury issues are far from behind them, they are getting healthier. Team that fact with an awakened lineup, Pete Crow-Armstrong’s MVP-caliber play and signs of life from big offseason acquisition Alex Bregman, and there’s a lot for this bunch to be happy about.
And yet, there’s an overwhelming feeling of business left unfinished.
Whether that’s due to the jarring interruption from the high-flying feelings of their fast start to the campaign or the leftover sting of a briefer-than-desired playoff run last October, there’s more on the Cubs’ to-do list than what they’ve checked off to this point.
“At the beginning of the year, if you would have said this is what things would look like, I think a lot of people would have a lot more concerns,” shortstop Dansby Swanson said. “And if you would say, ‘Hey, this would be our record at this point and this is all that we’ve endured,’ I think people would be a little surprised or shocked or would even be like, ‘Yeah, we’ll take that.’
“The way I look at it is that we’re in such a good place and I feel like we haven’t played that well yet. There’s been a lot of guys, offensively, underperforming from what they’re used to. You could even say that about the pitching side.
“There’s so much room for this team to continue to grow and get better and play better, and it’ll be a fun second half.”
While slowly improving health will get the Cubs closer to what Jed Hoyer’s front office envisioned at the start of the season, he figures to have some work to do to get the roster into better contending shape.
That again means a focus on pitching as the trade deadline approaches. Hoyer & Co. balked at the high price of pitching last summer. Will they come to a different decision about the top of the market this time around?
The Cubs found themselves short on reliable pitching in last year’s season-ending NLDS loss to the division-rival Brewers, who once again have control of the Central, ahead by five games as the second half gets underway.
“The Brewers are the cream of the crop,” lefty starter Matthew Boyd said late last month. “The Central runs through them, we all know that.”
If the Cubs are going to finally move past the annual roadblock from Milwaukee, the midsummer arms race is an opportunity to gain an edge.
“Definitely, with our injuries, we could use pitching,” manager Craig Counsell said.
Counsell has gotten excellent work out of his fill-in arms as the Cubs have spent the last month piecing together a pitching staff. The big-salaried manager has his own expectations to live up to as the second half arrives.
All these Cubs do. They started the campaign with championship-level aspirations, and now is the time to deliver.
Survival is not all there is. The Cubs were built to dominate, to be good enough to win it all. Are they?
“We’re pretty calloused as a group,” Bregman said. “We’ve been through a lot: 10-game winning streaks, 10-game losing streaks, our whole rotation’s gone down and our closer. It built a certain kind of toughness into our group. It’s a good thing.”
The road to proving it starts now.
“I’m proud of how hard it was for us and how much adversity was thrown our way,” Crow-Armstrong said. “For how beat up we were, for how many guys have cycled through here, … this was a friggin’ team effort, this first half.
“It definitely shows that this clubhouse, this team that we have right now is capable, super capable. … It sets you up to take that same sort of confidence from this first half into the second half.”