There go the Cubs

The slow leak keeps leaking on the north side of Chicago, emitting a faint hiss that sounds increasingly sinister. Deflategate, it turns out, is not just a river in Foxborough. Like everything else in American history, it's migrated west.

Which is to say: 2016 seems like history, too.

That was the year the Chicago Cubs won 103 games and the World Series, something they hadn't done since before William Howard Taft got stuck in his bathtub. Great joy abounded in the Second City. W flags flew from sea to shining sea. And the best part was, it didn't feel like a one-off, because the 2016 Cubs were absurdly young and the entire thing felt built to last.

Three years later, those Cubs are still winning.

OK. So they won last night, anyway.

Beat the New York Mets 5-2, the Cubs did, behind Yu Darvish's five-hitter. Javy Baez went 3-for-3 and drove in three runs. The bullpen didn't blow it for once.

This bumped the Cubs' season record to 70-61, which is  not bad when you consider their starting rotation is aging, their bullpen is sketchy and all those young guys from 2016 are three years older and struggle mightily to get a base hit sometimes. Since the end of May, they're two games over .500. They're now three games behind the first-place Cardinals in the NL Central, and two in front of the Phillies in the wild-card.

In other words, they're a pretty average-to-above-average baseball team.

In further other words, the team built to last is looking more and more like a team built to be dismantled in the offseason.

It has, amazingly, been a steady regression since 2016. From 103 wins and a world championship in 2016, the Cubs fell to 92 wins and a loss in the NLCS to the Dodgers in 2017. They rebounded to win 95 games in 2018, but went a drowsy 16-12 in September, lost the one-game NL Central tiebreaker to the Brewers at home, then lost the one-game wild card playoff to the Rockies at home.

That's the bad news.

The good news is, there's still a month left in this season to turn it all around.

Maybe the bats will awaken. Maybe the bullpen will stop jacking around. Maybe the aging starters will reach back and find their glory days again. Maybe they'll overtake the bleeping Cardinals, charge into the playoffs, reach the Worl--

OK. So that's probably not going to happen.

I mean, if it hasn't happened so far in five months, why would it in the sixth?

The only realistic hope here is the Phillies don't seem inclined to do it, either. They're about as win-a-couple, lose-a-couple as the Cubs, with a 68-63 record. In their last 10 games, they're 5-5. And they've scored 17 fewer runs than they've allowed this season.

The Cubs, on the other hand, have scored 64 more runs than they've given up. So there's that.

Doesn't seem like much, given the giddy future-that-was in 2016. But at least it's something.

And as any Cubs fan could tell you, At Least It's Something is a place every Cubs fan knows like home.