All is not lost for the Cubs, but it will be soon if they don’t find their bats

SHARE All is not lost for the Cubs, but it will be soon if they don’t find their bats
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The Brewers’ Orlando Arcia turns a double play over the Cubs’ Kris Bryant in Milwaukee’s 3-1 victory Monday. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

It seems odd for a 95-victory team to look so fragile. Cruel, even. But that’s where the Cubs are right now, as vulnerable as a soap bubble.

A season feels like it’s slipping away, partly because the Cubs picked a bad time — again — to forget how to hit and partly because the Brewers are that good. The Brewers won the National League Central tiebreaker 3-1 on Monday at Wrigley Field, then threw their caps and gloves into the air and celebrated like kids between the mound and home plate.

Now it’s down to one game for the Cubs as they head to the wild-card round Tuesday against the Rockies. The winner will play the Brewers in a best-of-five NL Division Series. The loser will be done, just like that.

‘‘We’re not dead in the water,’’ Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. ‘‘I’ve been involved in wild-card teams that have gone all the way.’’

Two questions spring immediately to mind in the face of that optimism:

Is this the end?

How could this be the end?

The Cubs were in first place alone in the NL Central from Aug. 1 until Saturday, when the blazing-hot Brewers caught them. That necessitated a 163rd game, and the Brewers pried the Cubs’ fingers from the division title.

The North Siders had a five-game lead in the division Sept. 2 and lost it.

That’s why they find themselves in a wild-card game, and that’s why the possibility of a 95-victory season juddering to a halt exists. Vulnerability seems to be around every corner.

‘‘We’ll see what we’re made of [Tuesday],’’ third baseman Kris Bryant said.

One game isn’t going to change what we already know about this team. The Cubs have been up and down, dealt with serious injuries and still won a lot of games. But the season has had a weird vibe to it. Let’s call it a strange, successful season.

That continued Monday. The Cubs didn’t get a hit until the fifth inning and finished with three for the game. Maddon pulled starter Jose Quintana after 64 pitches and one earned run allowed, then went through six relievers. Whatever happens Tuesday and beyond, Maddon figures to have bullpen issues. And the Brewers won’t.

It’s not just that Cubs starter Jon Lester needs to be great in the wild-card game; it’s that his team needs to hit and score runs. This is a bad time to be concerned about the possibility of that not happening. In September, the Cubs scored three runs or fewer 14 times. In October, they already have done so once.

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Individual slumps are one thing. Communal boycotts of the run column are another.

‘‘The consistent hard contact has not been there, more than anything,’’ Maddon said. ‘‘And I can’t give you a solid reason. I’ve talked to [hitting coach] Chili [Davis] and the hitters a lot, too. We’ve just got to find it quickly.’’

This is not how the Cubs saw the postseason playing out when they had the best record in the league for much of the season. But now they’re hoping to draw on muscle memory. They won a wild-card game against the Pirates in 2015 and made it to the NL Championship Series.

‘‘It’s no fun,’’ Maddon said of the gold-to-tin path this season. ‘‘Of course, we’d prefer the other route. All year, we knew how good Milwaukee is, and they were relentless.’’

What a strange day it was at Wrigley, with Brewers fans cheering almost as loudly as Cubs fans.

Tickets had been available for the 163rd game, and lots of people seemed intent on turning the place into Miller Park South. ‘‘Let’s go, Cubbies!’’ chants competed with ‘‘Let’s go, Brewers!’’ chants. Weird.

The Brewers’ fans were cheering on a very confident team. That self-assuredness is reminiscent of the 2016 Cubs, who knew they were good all the way to a World Series title. The Brewers might not be as stacked, talent-wise, as some American League teams, but they’re incredibly hot. They’ve won eight consecutive games and 10 of their last 11. That might matter more.

It’s why Brewers slugger Jesus Aguilar had no problem calling out the Cubs in a TV interview Sunday.

‘‘They know they have a problem [Monday],’’ he said.

They did.

In the Rockies, the Cubs will face a wild-card opponent that had to take an evening flight from Los Angeles to Chicago. So they’ll have that going for them.

The rest of it doesn’t feel so hot, even if the Cubs are going to the postseason for the fourth year in a row.

‘‘We won 95 games, it just wasn’t good enough,’’ Rizzo said. ‘‘We won 98 games one year, and we were happy we were in the wild card. It’s just the way it’s shifted around here. The expectations have gone up.’’

They have. Confidence, on the other hand, seems to be waning.

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