CINCINNATI — You were expecting 2016?
Anyone who thought all that talk in spring training about the ‘‘2016-like vibe’’ was going to combine with a soft early schedule to turn these Cubs into those Cubs, well, left-hander Jon Lester has a suggestion for you:
Get over it.
‘‘Everybody wants to compare everything to ’16,’’ Lester said even before the Cubs dropped to 2-3 after a 1-0 loss Monday to the Reds. ‘‘I said it in ’17, and I’ll say it again this year: There’s a reason we made history that year. It’s because it was a historic start. You don’t see teams get off to starts like that every year.
‘‘Everybody automatically wants to go to that and say, ‘OK, that’s what we need to compare every year to.’ You can’t do that. That’s unfair to us. I think the big thing is we’re playing good baseball, and . . . I like our chances if we do that.’’
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The Cubs stormed to an 8-1 start in 2016 and went on to win 103 games and the World Series championship.
Last season, they admittedly suffered a ‘‘hangover effect’’ from the historic title and short offseason and stumbled into the All-Star break two games below .500. But they still looked better early than this team does now, winning their first three series of the season.
In addition to the Cubs’ hitting woes, the starting pitching has been spotty at best, including poor season debuts from Lester, Yu Darvish and Jose Quintana.
Even in a six-inning outing in which he allowed only one run, Tyler Chatwood struggled with his command enough to walk six in his Cubs debut.
‘‘I think people are kind of overreacting to a lot of things right now with the starts and so forth,’’ said Lester, who will make his second start of the season Tuesday, weather permitting. ‘‘I mean, I’m in no way, shape or form panicking. If that start [against the Marlins] would have gone fine, I would have looked at this start just the same. Just prepare for the next one.’’
Lester couldn’t get out of the fourth inning in the season opener Thursday, but the Cubs won that game 8-4.
A strong start Tuesday and a split of the series heading into a day off Wednesday might go a long way toward taking some of the sour taste out of the first full turn through the rotation.
‘‘All across baseball, you see certain guys that aren’t having the starts that people want, and it’s like front-page news,’’ Lester said. ‘‘It’s the first [five] games. We’ve got a long ways to go. I don’t think anybody in here is worried about one start. You start putting a month or so of that together, and then maybe we need to re-evaluate some things. But one start is not going to make or break guys’ seasons.’’
Lester is coming off a season that included a two-week stretch on the disabled list (lat) and his highest ERA since 2012 (4.33). So his Opening Day start didn’t happen in a vacuum.
‘‘You can’t run from it,’’ he said. ‘‘At the same time, you can’t allow outside influences to make you panic or start second-guessing what you’ve done.
‘‘I like to look at the big picture and the small picture. The small picture is I’ve got to prepare for this start [Tuesday], and the big picture is we have a long way to go.’’
