Agreed with all the sentiments in the past few posts. Again, people need to understand what the current dynamic is and not continue to expect resurgent teams like Philly and Atlanta to just roll over and play dead for us, just because they've been lower-tier, easy-win-against teams for the past few years.
As of a quarter of the way through the season, while the Cubs have the second-best run differential in the league, it's Atlanta that has the best. Expecting them to fall apart when facing us, like they have in every series we've played them over the past three years, is not very useful. We should be exceedingly happy we (and, admittedly, the umpires and the New York replay officials) managed to keep them to two runs, not upset at Darvish for giving up one run over four innings, and only pitching four innings on his first start off the DL.
I still think we have more depth than the other teams in the Central, and, like last year, will outlast them. It's always a great challenge, making it though the playoffs just to get to the WS, and yeah, we may see some different teams than expected in the playoffs that we'll need to get past just to get back there. That's why we cannot -- and are not -- trying to build a team designed *only* to beat the Nationals and the Dodgers. We've just got to try and win every series, every game, every inning, every at-bat and every pitch.
You look at it that way, and put the effort and concentration in at those levels, and results will flow from that. If you are trying to win Game 7 of the World Series in every game, from April through September, you will almost always fail to even get to a Wild Card berth, much less...
