The second half of the season kicks into gear on Thursday with the Cubs taking on the faltering St. Louis Cardinals and that means that we get to kiss the unofficial first half of the season goodbye. But man oh man what a first half it was! Statistically the Cubs have been the best team across the board in the National League, with a record of 55-38 (1st in NL) and team stats of 476 runs, 106 wRC+, .265 AVG, .345 OBP,  .771 OPS, and a 20.8 WAR (all best in the NL). The team has proven to be able to hang with a pace that was set by the 2016 World Champion team, but for some reason, it just has not felt that way sometimes.

The 2018 version of the Cubbies have been infected by the injury bug in a way that we just have not seen in the past several years, with multiple key cogs from this roster missing significant time. Yu Darvish, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Carl Edwards Jr, Brian Duensing, Addison Russell, and Jason Heyward have all seen DL time in just 3 months of baseball.

In addition to the injuries, this roster has also seen multiple players that aren’t performing at the level at which we have grown accustomed to seeing. Kyle Hendricks, Darvish, Jose Quintana, Tyler Chatwood, Duensing, and Rizzo have put up some less than stellar stats so far this season, but the hope is that each of them are primed for a bounce-back second half.

While the offense has been the best in the National League at scoring runs, they haven’t exactly come at a consistent rate, with the team scoring 0 or 1 runs on 19 occasions with the majority of the runs coming from the 25 times that the offense has scored 8 or more runs.

With all of the negatives that have come with this season, it is important to remember how impressive of a year this team is having and the fact that the positives have far outweighed the negatives.

The batting order is loaded with guys that have either broken out or continued their excellence at the plate. Albert Almora (114 wRC+), Ian Happ (122), Jason Heyward (109), Kyle Schwarber (129), Ben Zobrist (118), Addison Russell (100), Javy Baez (132), and Willson Contreras (122) have all exceeded any expectations that were placed on them heading into 2018.

Pair those impressive numbers with more dominating performances on the bump from Jon Lester (2.58 ERA), Pedro Strop (2.52), Steve Cishek (1.88) and Brandon Morrow (1.47) and you have a roster that is proving to be the class of the NL.

Considering the fact that the two best and most important players on the roster (Bryant and Rizzo) have yet to hit their stride and have failed to be featured in the same lineup a total of 61 times out of the 93 games on the season, it seems as if this team has no where to go but up.

The coming weeks will be very interesting as the trade deadline approaches. The Cubs currently sit 2.5 games ahead of the second place Brewers but each roster is far from being set. Expect the Brewers to make some major roster-altering moves while the Cubs make some smaller moves to keep them first place and compete with the likes of the Astros, Yankees, and Red Sox out of the American League for the World Series.

As long as the young, breakout offensive players continue their torrid pace in the second half and the superstars remain healthy and can produce like we are used to seeing, expect this Cubs team to kick it into an even higher gear these next few months. If they can successfully do that, we may be sitting on our couch watching some World Series baseball being played at Wrigley Field this fall.