Are Cubs Floating on Helium or Are They Another Hindenburg

It’s impossible to tell at this juncture whether these Cubs will realize their playoff aspirations or crash to the ground like a lead zeppelin. It’s hard to tell why they are in such a position — we pundits often speak of the Cardinals’ red devil magic, or more recently, the Brewers’ blue devil magic, but the North Siders would seem to have their own special potion.

We’re looking at a team that’s 13 games over .500 at 57-44, but is highly imperfect. The Cubs have had two 10-game winning streaks and one 10-game losing streak, don’t really have a starting pitching staff, have frequent power/average brownouts, have six starters way below their career numbers, but somehow keep winning.

How? Defense. These guys are so good that their No. 1 defense is actually underrated and their facility is taken for granted. It’s shocking when they make errors. Even their much-maligned corner outfielders have been regularly turning in top-notch plays — Ian Happ in particular has kept a number of singles from becoming doubles by playing the caroms intelligently, and Seiya Suzuki has made a few challenging catches, like this one:

This nicely complements Pete Crow-Armstrong, the best defender on the planet, who basically needs them to guard the lines. He has the rest covered. The infield defense is gold from port to starboard, and the catching tandem features solid offense, good defense, and ABS genius Carson Kelly, late-bloomer extraordinaire.

The offensive players also show signs of recovering. Alex Bregman has turned on the power, Dansby Swanson had a month’s worth of stats in a weekend recently, and Nico Hoerner had a 4-4 performance just a few days ago. Michael Busch continues to pound atom balls and walk enough to make his work respectable, while his power switch is on as well.

Happ’s average isn’t much better than Swanson’s, but both have 50+ RBI and a gaggle of long flies. Suzuki’s numbers are respectable as usual, and the not-so-secret weapon has a zillion WAR and a few MVP votes in his corner. I mean, PCA, wtf? It’s like he decided to have good strike-zone judgement overnight — kind of like Sammy Sosa did when Jeff Pentland got to the team. His OBP is .384, and he’s doing damage leading off.

The Cubs are going to need everything they get to supplant the vastly-monied Dodgers, or even the Brew Crew, but they just might do it.