What we learned about the Cubs in May

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What a difference a week makes. 

This time last week, the Cubs were leaving Wrigley Field dressed like Ron Burgandy and Champ Kind and Joe Maddon was delivering lines about foot fetishes.

The Cubs were feeling themselves...and LOOKING themselves.

They had just wrapped up a 7-2 homestand, plowing through the likes of the San Francisco Giants, Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds at Wrigley Field and starting to play more like the 2016 version of themselves in all facets of the game: pitching, defense and offense.

Now, the Cubs are enjoying a much-needed off-day to unwind from an 0-6 West Coast trip that saw them get shut out twice by the Los Angeles Dodgers, rock Clayton Kershaw but still lose the game and then get outscored 13-5 by the San Diego Padres, the only team that has a 0.0 percent chance of making the postseason by FanGraphs' metrics.

In fact, it was the first time in 44 years the team with the most losses in baseball swept the defending champs this late in the season, as the Elias Sports Bureau pointed out.

May was more than just the ups and downs of the last two weeks, however.

Here are five things we learned about the 2017 Cubs in the season's second month:

These aren't the 2016 Cubs.

No, the Cubs are not struggling because David Ross and Dexter Fowler are gone. But things are definitely different this year, even though much of the roster is intact from the World Series run. 

A year ago at this time, the Cubs were sitting atop baseball with a 35-15 record and dominant +128 run differential. They're now 25-27, 2.5 games out of first place and have an even 0 as a run differential.

The Cubs didn't lose their 27th game in 2016 until the last few days of June. 

All that being said, FanGraphs still pegs the Cubs with an 81.9 percent of making the playoffs and a 10.6 percent chance of winning the World Series.

The American League style offense hasn't shown up yet.

I thought the Cubs would take a step forward offensively with full seasons of Kyle Schwarber and Willson Contreras and a potential return to form. 

But that hasn't occurred. The Cubs woke up Thursday morning ranking 14th in baseball in runs scored, just two runs ahead of the rebuilding White Sox.

If you look at OPS, the numbers paint a much bleaker picture: The Cubs rank 23rd out of 30 with a .728 team OPS. 

And all this with Kris Bryant building off his MVP campaign by posting a .933 OPS and on pace for 34 homers, 106 runs and 109 walks.

Ian Happ isn't the savior.

The second week of May brought about what seemed like a revolution on the roster as Happ exploded onto the scene and became the latest in a long line of impact rookies immediately finding success in the big leagues.

But even with that scorching start, Happ's average is down to .214 and his OPS sits at .741. He's also striking out in more than a third of his plate appearances (34.4 percent) even if he is walking at an above-average pace (10.9 percent).

Those struggles are to be expected from a guy that played just 91 games above the Class-A level. Nobody figured he would basically average an extra-base hit a game forever.

Happ's arrival has pushed one thing that may stick throughout the season: Moving Ben Zobrist to the leadoff spot.

All along, it seemed Zobrist's skillset bore the closest resemblance to Fowler on the 2017 roster, but Joe Maddon always deployed Zobrist in that cleanup spot to help provide protection to Anthony Rizzo. When Happ emerged as an offensive force, Maddon was able to move Zobrist to the leadoff spot and bump the slumping Schwarber down a spot, utilizing Happ as the Rizzo protection (for a time, anyways).

Obviously the short-term results haven't been perfect given the Cubs just lost six straight games and scored only nine runs on the West Coast trip. But overall, it seems Zobrist will be an ideal fit atop the lineup in the long run.

The rotation has not found its groove yet.

Coming out of spring training, pitching — namely the rotation — was the main concern regarding this Cubs team. 

Sure, there are a whole host of long-term pitching questions with this franchise, but focusing just on 2017, the question of depth has already shown itself.

Overall, I thought the pitching staff would be solid because any fall back to Earth from the starting rotation would/could be offset by the plethora of high-powered options in the bullpen. Of course, that hasn't played out, but that's mainly because the starting rotation has taken an enormous leap backwards. 

Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta and Kyle Hendricks have had their ups and downs, but the real issue stems from the fact the four and five starters (John Lackey plus a Brett Anderson/Eddie Butler combo) have combined for just five quality starts in 20 tries. That's putting a lot of stress on the bullpen to get a lot of outs.

The Brett Anderson experiment hasn't worked out and Eddie Butler may be 2-1 in four starts, but he's walked 13 batters in 18.1 innings and carries a 1.58 WHIP and 4.42 ERA.

As Jake Arrieta said Wednesday, the Cubs' turnaround hinges on the starting rotation at least taking steps toward their 2016 form, even if they can't duplicate the driving force behind the 103-win campaign.

Patience is key. 

It has to be. What else can the Cubs do? 

Maddon has already shaken up the lineup and there's always the risk his Madd Scientist ways can become stale or be tuned out by the players.

Theo Epstein's front office still has two months until the trade deadline and their top trade piece (Happ) is currently playing on a daily basis in the big leagues. 

Schwarber will not continue to struggle this much offensively. Neither will Addison Russell. Or Rizzo for that matter. 

Signs point to Arrieta being pretty unlucky during these first two months, even if his velocity is down.

Jon Lester and John Lackey have long track records of success at a higher level than they're achieving right now.

Apart from a rough start in San Diego (that was dragged down by a grand slam), Kyle Hendricks has been really good since the middle of April.

The Cubs are simply too talented and deep to continue to play at a .500 clip for the rest of the season and they are fortunate to play in baseball's worst division, where no team has shown any indication of separating from the pack.

If the same problems still exist to this level in next month's "what we learned" column, then you could convince me much more easily that it's time to "panic."

But the baseball season is a marathon and we all knew the Cubs weren't going to just coast to a second straight championship. 

Let's see what happens in June.

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