Last year is here.
The Cubs spent the entire 2017 regular season waiting to reprise the 2016 playoffs. They yawned. They tapped their feet impatiently. They stared absently at their cellphones.
The regular season was something to get through, the postseason something to live for. It’s the difference between attending a lecture about skydiving and jumping out of an airplane.
Manager Joe Maddon might not have said any of that outright this season, but there was no mistaking the meaning in almost everything he uttered and did: Just get us to the playoffs.
It’s here. After a bumpy regular season, equal parts head-scratching and fist-bumping, it’s finally here. Starting Friday in Washington, the Cubs face the Nationals in a best-of-five National League Division Series. Their hope is that now, with the bright lights on, they’ll revert to being the dominant team that won the World Series last season.
They’re not the favorites to win it all again. Heck, they might not even be favored to win their first series. But whatever the cockiness equivalent of muscle memory is — big-stage memory? — the Cubs think they have it. And in Maddon’s world, you can believe something into being.
The cast is mostly the same. Anthony Rizzo. Kris Bryant. Javy Baez. Jake Arrieta. Addison Russell. Jon Lester. Kyle Hendricks. Kyle Schwarber. Willson Contreras. And so on. All the names that forever will give Cubs fans a warm feeling.
But will the team be able to dig deep and extract the award-winning performances from last season? That’s the question. The starting pitching hasn’t been nearly as reliable as it was last season. Arrieta still is dealing with the effects of a hamstring injury. Lester had ugly, big-run losses pop up throughout the season. On the offensive side, Schwarber had a horrific first half and Ben Zobrist wasn’t nearly the player he was in 2016.
There was something not quite right about this team for much of the season, and lots of ink and airtime was spent trying to explain it. A World Series hangover? Possibly. Other teams simply improving? Probably. Even when the Cubs did start winning regularly, they feasted on lesser opponents and struggled against better teams.
But it’s not being Pollyanna-ish to suggest the same Cubs team that was two games below .500 at the All-Star break can play its best ball in the playoffs. It will involve flipping a switch, a rare ability in sports. Beating up on the Braves, Pirates, Brewers, Mets, Cardinals, Rays and Reds in September isn’t the same as facing the NL’s best in October. The Cubs are going to have to raise their game if they want 2016: The Sequel.
I don’t think they’re the best team in baseball, but I think they think they are. And that might be enough to get them beyond whatever their issues have been this season. The Nationals have better pitching, though their ace, Max Scherzer, had to leave a game Saturday against the Pirates because of a hamstring ‘‘tweak.’’ Will Scherzer’s and Arrieta’s hammies cancel each other out?
The Indians and Dodgers have more complete teams than the Cubs do. But when all these teams look at the Cubs, they surely see a defending World Series champion that hasn’t lost its strut, despite evidence that indicates it shouldn’t be strutting.
Everything starts with Maddon, who talked in August about wanting to face the then-streaking Dodgers in the postseason. He projects three things: confidence, purpose and what is this guy smoking? In much of what he says is the suggestion that he knows something nobody else knows. Whatever he comes up with might not work, even might blow up in his face, but the fact he thought it up gives him — and a segment of Cubs fans — comfort.
It often is said that the line between genius and madness is paper-thin. So what will Maddon do to win a playoff game in dramatic fashion and what will he do to make you want to commit unspeakable acts on your television set? Both are going to happen in the playoffs. There are constants in this world. One of them is Joe, in all his Joe-ness.
Whichever side you’re on in the discussion of the importance of the regular season, it was humorous to see how Maddon’s message shifted in 2017, depending on how his team was playing.
When the Cubs were struggling, the theme was, ‘‘It doesn’t matter how you get to the playoffs, just that you get there.’’ When the Cubs were winning, the theme was, ‘‘We’ve really got it going now!’’
The Cubs are going to the playoffs, and they appear to have it going. Where are they going? To Washington. And, if they have their way, to 2016.
Wait till last year? It’s here.
Follow me on Twitter @MorrisseyCST.
Email: rmorrissey@suntimes.com
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