The Chicago Cubs Would Like Your Attention

The Chicago Cubs have maintained an awfully low profile for a team that 1) wins often, and by a lot of runs, 2) homers more than anyone, and 3) has an increasingly sure-thing MVP patrolling center now that Shohei Ohtani is slumping through his ouchy season. The Cubs hit nine homers on Monday night in a full 17-3 clocking of the Milwaukee Brewers, the team with the best record in baseball, and it landed as quietly as something that inherently loud could land. That feat has been eclipsed only once in baseball history, but it was also eclipsed more or less instantaneously by one homer that very dramatically wasn't. That the Cubs are the secret in plain sight may be for any number of reasons, starting with the fact that none of those nine dingers was hit by Pete Crow-Armstrong, the MVP we mentioned a paragraph ago and the latest anagrammatic athlete in the American playground; no, he stayed stuck at 38, trailing only Kyle Schwarber in all of baseball. Crow-Armstrong—we're all adults here, and we can type and read full names, even hyphenated ones—leads everyone in WAR, Offensive WAR, Adjusted OPS+, and lots of other fun metrics you won't have to look up. He is the second best hitter in baseball besides Yordan Alvarez, as well as an excellent defensive player, and he has played in every game this year, an increasingly appreciated skill in the load management era. He vibrates his way through all the games he never misses, and in short is not just the consensus MVP but the MFP—Most Fun Player. But while Crow-Armstrong is the Cubs' best player by a decent margin, he's not alone in terms of power production. The Cubs in general are mad bombers of the first order; in their last eight games, they have won 19-2, 17-5, and 17-3, and have hit double digits in more than a quarter (20 of 78) of their wins and topped eight in 40, of which they managed to lose two, including one over the weekend. The wonder is how they remain seven games behind the Brewers, which may be partially answered by the fact that they are also tied for last in home runs allowed—a truly preposterous 209—which at the current pace would make them the 15th most generous pitching staff in the sports history when it comes to giving up homers. Now how do you not market the hell out of that?

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