If you’re perplexed by the question of what’s wrong with the Chicago Cubs this season, as many still are, nearly halfway through the defending World Series champion’s middling 2017 season, a good place to start is at the most fundamental level — the individual level, the human level, the molecular level.
Go back to the winter. You’re a pitcher. You lose a month out of your normal offseason, by virtue of playing into November. So instead of ramping up your winter throwing program around Christmastime, you start around the third week of January. And instead of arriving at spring training with your customary level of sharpness and freshness, your arm is sluggish and erratic.