The Happ-ening

 

The Cubs are in first place, the rotation is strong as ever, and Ian Happ is having his best season to date. Not a bad time to be a Cubs fan.

It's even better that the division is looking pretty securely theirs, as they're the only NL Central team with a record above .500- Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati are competing with records under .500, and two of those teams lost game time to COVID. So the Cubs are not only hanging onto 1st, but they're good enough to sustain it for another month.

The thing is, the Baez-Bryant power core has been rearranged for 2020, and the power has been coming from people like Ian Happ, Jason Heyward, Jason Kipnis and David Bote, the guys David Ross expected to layer the back half of the lineup. Happ is having his best season to date,  batting .311 with 22 RBIs and 10 homers, tied with Schwarber for most roundtrippers. Kipnis is having a comeback year. And even newcomers like Cameron Maybin and Jose Martinez are doing alright. 

The rotation is strong as well. Lester and Mills have had recent starts get away from them, but they still have starting gigs. Yu Darvish is staring down the Cy Young race with a month left to go, Kyle Hendricks is also surging right now, and Adbert Alzolay is warming up to the majors, a little. Also helps that Jeremy Jeffress is absolutely unhittable right now. 

This is a strong Cubs team, and they need to build on this lead and not skate too far on this lack of competition. This has stopped them before, and I hope it doesn't this time.

Coming Tomorrow- Two players were mic'd today, Pads-A's. One of them was Fernando Tatis and was eloquent and fun as a wire. The other...was a bit quieter. His custom's up tomorrow.