Cubs Week In Review: Pete Crow-Armstrong, Kyle Tucker Powering NL Central Kings

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Image courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

What's more dangerous than confidence? The skill to back it up. Quite succinctly, Craig Counsell's ball club, minus its lingering pitching concerns, is the gold standard in the game of baseball in 2025. May has brought vibrantly blooming flowers to the Chicago Cubs, even as more puzzling concerns arise for the pitching staff. By knocking off two division opponents in a row—on the road against the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Milwaukee Brewers—the Cubs have settled into what we expect to be a successful summer stretch, affixing them firmly atop the NL Central. How do they do it? By being themselves.

As baseball pundits on the North Side and beyond proposed last season ad nauseam, this Cubs lineup is too talented not to produce, but alas, it never really did. At least, not when it mattered. This season, with a much more comfortable skipper in his second year at the helm, and one of the best hitters of his generation at the top of the order, the lineup those pundits were referencing is here. With top to bottom production, the Cubbies had 58 hits and 36 runs combined over their last two series. In one of those games, the series finale in Milwaukee, they were shut out. But, at the start of that series in particular, the Cubs were lights out. 

Drowning out their hospitable northern neighbors, audible "Let's Go Cubbies" chants filled the retractable roof confines of American Family Field this past Friday night. The scores of Cubs fans in attendance witnessed their squad jump all over the Brew Crew, helping the young and still very inexperienced Ben Brown enjoy a mostly quiet night from the mound in a 10-0 rout. Crew fans hoping to engage in some playful trash talk with their rival guests ate crow. Actually, it was Pete Crow-Armstrong serving up humble pie to the Brew Crew, as his star continues to ascend to dizzying heights. In the Milwaukee series alone, Crow-Armstrong smashed three no-doubter home runs (and nearly a fourth), driving in a total of five runs in the process. He's made himself a swath of enemies in Milwaukee County, and that bodes quite well for us fans of the North Siders. 

Clear as the view of the Chicago skyline from a Gold Coast penthouse, the Cubs, anchored by Kyle Tucker, Ian Happ, Michael Busch, and others, are a problem offensively and mostly defensively for any team they square off against. Where this club's vulnerabilities lie is in its woefully inconsistent bullpen. It's hard to call this an all-out weakness, as the Cubs sit comfortably in first place in the division, but, exacerbated by his previous dreadful outing, Cubs reliever Julian Merryweather imploded in his sixth inning relief appearance on Sunday. After Shota Imanaga was forced to leave the game with a left hamstring strain, Merryweather took the bump in a high-leverage situation which featured the Brewers threatening with the go-ahead run at third base in a 0-0 game and two outs. He immediately proceeded to throw a wild pitch past catcher Miguel Amaya, allowing the runner at third to score easily. The Crew would go on to score three more in the inning on an uncharacteristic off day for the Cubs' offense. 

That game was simply a microcosm of a larger issue for the team, mainly onset by the mounting injuries to the North Siders' starting pitching rotation. With the club winning at the rate that they are, the front office must address a bullpen that could very likely get called on to do more as the squad remedies its unexpected starting pitching ailments. 

Luckily, the Chicago Cubs are an elite team that won't stay down for long. As it encounters more and more inevitable obstacles, the unflinching drive and sheer talent of this team should keep the organization focused on its mission: get in the postseason and do damage... even if they experience some delays in getting there.

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