What to make of the Cubs at All-Star break

Just a Cubs first half recap, and when I messaged you yesterday or two days ago, I was like, we can run with this in any direction that we sort of want to.

And when I think about the Cubs' first half recap, a little bit of a rollercoaster ride.

You had two separate 10-game win streaks.

You had that That big lull really in the middle of May that carried in towards the end of May where it seemed like the Cubs couldn't win a game.

And it started with that series in Texas and carried on all the way to a series in Pittsburgh before the Cubs won two of the final four.

And then they really got back on track at the end of the first half, taking two of three from Baltimore and two of three from the Cincinnati Reds.

The two things that stand out to me, the emergence of PCA and how it doesn't feel like this is just a little blip on the radar.

This is just like, hey, it's a hot streak of three or four weeks for Pete Crow Armstrong.

To me, it's the maturation of a player who is truly starting to figure it out.

There's just been some at-bats that have ended in walks where I've been just as impressed with those as I have a

move.

The 0-2s.

Yeah.

You know, two of

bats like where he's got an O2 and then he walks.

I mean, we never saw that before.

Correct.

And that's what stands out to me.

You know, you'll see the moonshot home runs or, you know, the flashy catches in center field.

And those will be the highlights that circulate on social media and garner, you know, hundreds of thousands of views.

But it's what you just said that I was alluding to those at bats where.

And there was one recently where he's behind 0-2, and then he ends up getting walked.

And the pitches that were balls weren't way out of the zone.

But Pete Carl Armstrong just now has that patience and that discipline that he's displaying, where it's a player who's clearly figuring it out.

He's solving the riddle.