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CHICAGO — The version of the Chicago Cubs that overpowered the National League for the first few weeks of the 2016 season is gone. It is not coming back. But the new edition of the Cubs, the one that’s played since the All-Star break, is a pretty good replacement. In fact it’s a championship-portrait, with one very important brush stroke left to make. That start was, indeed, amazing. Unreal, even. When the Cubs won 25 of their first 31 games, Cubs president Theo Epstein told an overexcited media, “This is not baseball reality. Baseball reality is it’s really hard to win a single big-league game. That’s why we celebrate them so much.” That was on May 10, and a few hours after Epstein spoke, the Cubs beat San Diego 8-7 to improve their record to 25-6 — a 130-win pace that would have obliterated the all-time record. To that point, the offense had averaged 6.2 runs per game, a pace of 1,003 runs. During the 162-game era, only the 1999 Cleveland Indians have scored more, and they did so in one of the most offense-friendly seasons in history. Meanwhile, the Cubs’ pitching and defense had combined to allow just 2.8 runs per game, a figure that translates to 465 runs allowed. That would have topped the 1968 St. Louis Cardinals’ record for the era, and the Redbirds established that record in the Year of the Pitcher. The point: The Cubs were playing fantasy baseball. To have maintained those early trends, they would have been arguably both the greatest run-scoring and the greatest run-prevention team of the past 55 years, maybe ever. They’re good -- really good -- but that just doesn’t happen. So it’s been no surprise that Epstein’s words turned out to be prescient. Of course, for a while there, it was looking like Epstein’s foresight was a little too on-the-nose. When the Cubs staggered into the All-Star break on the heels of a 7-15 stretch, their fan base, conditioned over 108 years for disappointment, began to get jittery. For that matter, so did the Cubs. “I wouldn’t say we were panicking,” said Cubs catcher and resident sage Miguel Montero. “But you know what? We were concerned. And I believe it was in everybody’s thoughts, even if we didn’t recognize that. Every team goes through that tough time, every hitter, every pitcher.” So it is a relief that the Cubs have been taking advantage of a 20-day stretch in which they haven’t had to venture more than 90 miles from Wrigley Field. Including a win at Pittsburgh to end the first half of the season, the Cubs have won 10 of 15, and even with the rival Cardinals playing well, Chicago’s lead in the NL Central has never dropped under 6 1/2 games. During this 15-game recovery period: The Cubs have ranked fifth in the NL with 4.5 runs per game. The pitching and defense have allowed 2.6 runs per game to lead the majors. The Cubs’ fielders have led the majors with 50 runs saved. Chicago’s plus-28 run differential leads the majors. The front office addressed the team’s biggest weakness by acquiring closer Aroldis Chapman, setting up a back end of the bullpen in Chapman, Hector Rondon and Pedro Strop that is reminiscent of the end-of-game monster that carried the Kansas City Royals to the past two World Series.
This is why a common phrase lately from effusive Cubs manager Joe Maddon is, “Lots of good stuff out there.” The Cubs don’t have to be historically good in every facet of the game. They just have to be the best team this season, and in doing so, that would create plenty of history in itself. No, that 25-6 stretch isn’t going to be repeated, but the fact that it ever occurred gave the Cubs the space to absorb their downturn. “It was a good thing we started out really good,” Montero said. “So when you go through that tough time, it doesn’t hurt you as much.”  The emblem of the Cubs’ amazing start was probably ace Jake Arrieta, who starts Saturday against Seattle. Arrieta, as we remember, carried over his amazing second half of last season, and by the time his tear was finished, he’d gone 25-1 with a 1.09 ERA over 31 starts. Talk about raising expectations. But he, too, stumbled a bit as the break approached, and when he returned, he declared the time off to be exactly what he needed.
But as the Cubs get well as a team, they’re still kind of waiting for Arrieta to have a reawakening of his own. Forget about his 25-1 stretch: That was crazy. Unrepeatable. Still, as the Cubs just start to peek ahead at the postseason, they need Arrieta to be the kind of ace who can mean so much in a playoff series. After allowing just 19 earned runs in his first 15 starts, Arrieta has allowed 20 in his past five. As the team around him continues to come together, Arrieta-as-ace is, in some respects, the missing piece of the Cubs’ postseason puzzle. "A lot people have high expectations -- so does he, so do I," Montero said. "But it's hard to repeat what he did last year. I just want him to go out there and be him. Just enjoy. Just pitch. "Sometimes he puts too much pressure on himself to repeat it again, trying to prove to everybody what he did last year wasn't a fluke. I know it wasn't a fluke. I know he's that type of guy. The numbers [though], they're hard to repeat." The same thing is true of Arrieta as it was for the club as a whole. That is, he doesn't have to be the ace of all-time aces; he just needs to be elite in the context of this season. Indeed, there are good things happening at Wrigley Field of late, and it's unfolding in a way that feels a lot more sustainable than 25-6. But for the good things to become great, the Cubs need Arrieta to recapture just a little bit of his old "unreality." Just a little.
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