Why it looks like 2016 again for Cubs

Come with me, way back to the weekend of Sept. 19-23, 2019, the penultimate weekend of last season, a baseball season that took place seemingly 30, maybe 40 years ago. That Thursday commenced a four-game series between century-long rivals Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals, a battle for the control of the division and the soul of the Midwest.

It was the culmination of a dramatic storyline, one that had featured the Cardinals as the dominant figure for decades until -- from the 2015 NLDS and Kyle Schwarber’s dramatic homer atop the right-field scoreboard at Wrigley until that very weekend -- the Cubs just ate the Cardinals’ lunch. The Cubs had won their elusive World Series, the Cardinals hadn’t made the playoffs in four years and Cubs had every justification to brag and boast. They had earned it.

But that weekend, the Cardinals destroyed what many thought was left of the Cubs’ dynasty. They won all four games in truly torturous fashion, all four one-run victories -- including a wild one that Saturday that featured Craig Kimbrel blowing a ninth-inning save on two consecutive pitches hit out of the park by Yadier Molina and Paul DeJong. The Cubs and beleaguered manager Joe Maddon had barely been hanging on all season, and that series broke them. The Cubs missed the playoffs, the Cardinals went to the NLCS and the Cubs dismissed Maddon. The biggest question mark for the offseason was not whether the Cubs would trade some of their most established stars, but how many? Was Kris Bryant on the table? Schwarber? Gasp, Javier Báez? All of them are eligible for free agency after the 2021 season, after all.

Except, well, would you look at this: A quarter of the way through this crazy baseball season, the team with the best record in baseball is … the Chicago Cubs. They’re 13-3. They have a 6 1/2-game lead in the NL Central already. They -- according to Fangraphs -- have 98.2 percent chance of reaching the playoffs. Their 13-3 run is tied for their best 16-game start in the Modern Era (since 1900) -- with 1907, when they went on to win the World Series. And they look like the well-oiled machine they were in 2016.

The general perception of the Cubs was that they could emerge from a four-team scramble in a wild season and make one last run. Instead, they might just be the best team in baseball. How is this happening? Can this last? Let’s take a look at the keys to the Cubs’ success so far, and how sustainable they might be.

1) The old stalwarts are still leading the way

Anthony Rizzo’s big personality has sometimes obscured how terrific of a hitter he really is. He put up the best OBP of his career last year, and his batting eye is even better so far this year. (And, as always, he’s getting hit on the regular; he leads MLB in six HBPs in 2020, and if he keeps that lead all year, it’ll be the fourth time he’s led in that category.)

He has been the linchpin, but many of your favorite Cubs are their best selves right now -- particularly in the rotation, where Jon Lester and Kyle Hendricks (who just pitched at Progressive Field on Wednesday night for the first time since Game 7 of the 2016 World Series) have been fantastic. Bryant, Jason Heyward and Báez are off to slightly slower starts, but none of them have fallen off the table, either. These Cubs in many ways look like the old Cubs, because they are the old Cubs.

2) The new guys are even better than they’d hoped

Ian Happ is the heralded Cubs prospect who arrived just after the 2016 season, which has always led him to feel both overhyped and underappreciated: He’s the guy who represents a future that isn’t quite as glorious, just can’t be as glorious, as the past. But that obscures just how good he’s been for the Cubs since 2017, and particularly just how fantastic he is right now. He has a .456 OBP, best on the team, and a .609 SLG, also tops on the roster.

The much-maligned Tyler Chatwood has finally started to be able to control his pitches, giving the team a surprise fourth starter. David Bote has gone from folk hero to regular key contributor. And hey, look at Jason Kipnis! The second baseman who formerly played for Cleveland -- he has admitted it’s weird to be playing for the team that beat his Indians in 2016 -- has been a revelation, with the best OPS on the Cubs. Many of the supplemental players for the Cubs the last few years have fallen short. Not this year.

3) Darvish!

For all the gruff that Yu Darvish got at the beginning of last season -- and there sure was a lot of it -- it did not go without notice how well he was pitching by September. (He and Nick Castellanos were basically the only things the Cubs had going that month.) He has carried that over in his first four starts of 2020, putting up a 1.88 ERA and putting up a nearly 7:1 K/BB ratio. After taking a no-hitter into the seventh against the Brewers on Thursday night, Darvish looks like the old Darvish -- the best possible Darvish. And with as well as Hendricks and especially Lester is pitching, he gives the team three aces. And we haven’t even talked about Alec Mills yet.

4) They’re getting more creative with the bullpen

No player represented the “downfall” of the post-2016 Cubs in ’19 more than Kimbrel. After missing the first half of the season, he never quite got in sync -- which hurt a Cubs team that needed every win it could get, particularly down the stretch. Kimbrel hasn’t rebounded this year -- he has given up seven earned runs in 2 2/3 innings, and 60 percent of the batters he has faced have reached base -- but the Cubs aren’t relying on him this time. Rowan Wick has emerged as a key pitcher late, as has Casey Sadler, but the major guy in the ’pen has been Jeremy Jeffress. Signed after a rough year in Milwaukee, Jeffress has been absolutely dominant. In seven innings, he has faced 23 batters. Only three of them have reached, and none of them on a base hit.

5) They’ve been together forever … even the new manager

It is embarrassing we have gone this long in a piece about the Cubs without talking about David Ross. The old Grandpa had his fair share of skeptics coming into the year, but he clearly has been perfect so far, a different voice than Maddon but one that obviously has a close connection to this team’s peak years. Ross felt like a throwback hire, and, as it turns out, that might have been exactly what the Cubs needed for this season.

It also helps, of course, that no one else in the NL Central has emerged, for their own reasons; it doesn’t look anything like a four-team race at all. But right now, the Cubs look as certain a bet for the playoffs as any team in baseball. The Cubs dynasty didn’t end up dying last September. And as far as we know in this crazy year, it may just be getting started.