(670 The Score) Whatever hope there was for these Cubs is fleeting, and reality now lingers like a storm cloud over Wrigleyville.
The Cubs were pummeled 13-4 by the Braves in front of a national television audience at Wrigley Field on Sunday night. The rout came one day after Chicago beat Atlanta by the same 13-4 margin, but it's Saturday that was the outlier for the Cubs, who have played poor baseball in a 6-9 start. Those 15 games aren't too small of a sample size to showcase what's wrong with this team.
In a little more than two weeks of work, the Cubs have confirmed their skeptics. They're a flawed team heading toward significant change, and it's becoming more apparent that a sell-off of the core looms this summer.
The Cubs have now gone through their rotation three times. After staff ace Kyle Hendricks allowed seven earned runs and four home runs over four innings of work Sunday, the Cubs' starters have a 5.91 ERA. Their offense continues to hit under the Mendoza Line, sitting at .192 after through Sunday night.
The Cubs boast an offense that strikes out around a quarter of the time, which represents one of the worst rates in the league. That makes it a struggle to move the few runners who do get on. Combine that with a pitching staff that lacks quality depth and this is what you get -- a below-average baseball team.
Cubs manager David Ross used to refer to starts by right-hander Yu Darvish as "win day." A Cy Young finalist last season, Darvish is now pitching for the Padres while the Cubs are lacking win days. They don't have a starting pitcher who offers a sure chance at victory. An offense that was elite in 2016 and 2017 devolved into an average unit and is now the worst in MLB early on in 2021.
Swapping left fielder Kyle Schwarber for Joc Pederson was never going to make a meaningful difference. The best results of the pitch lab weren't going to transform Jake Arrieta, Zach Davies and Trevor Williams into what the Cubs need in their rotation to compete at a high level. The personal motivations for Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant and Javier Baez can only offer the Cubs so much.
Even the eternal optimist could only garner so much hope for these Cubs in 2021 after seeing the steady decline in recent years of a championship team. Rizzo, Bryant and Baez are each playing out the final season of their contracts, and all could be traded by the July 31 deadline. It would mark the end of an era for the Cubs from which so much more was expected, but it looks like it's coming.
Fifteen games is more than enough to confirm what was feared for these Cubs.
Chris Emma covers the Bears, Chicago’s sports scene and more for 670TheScore.com. Follow him on Twitter @CEmma670.