In the visitors’ clubhouse at the Rangers’ ballpark in Arlington, Texas, on May 30, a Cubs-Reds game was showing on a pair of large-screen TVs. Pete Crow-Armstrong, the Cubs’ breakout superstar, dug in at the dish while a graphic displayed his gaudy offensive numbers.
“Fifty RBIs?” Cardinals veteran starting pitcher Miles Mikolas thundered across the room at left fielder Lars Nootbar. “Is that a lot? I don’t hit. I don’t know.”
Nootbar, one of the team’s best hitters, just shook his head from side to side as if to say, “It’s crazy.”
Or as he put it to a Chicago reporter moments later, “Stupid, man. All of them — their numbers are stupid.”
The Cubs’ offense has been far and away the best in the National League Central, the biggest reason they’re comfortably in first place with, according to Fangraphs, a better-than-75% chance to win the division for the first time since the pandemic-shortened season of 2020. Entering a stern weekend test in Detroit, the Cubs had won seven straight series and hadn’t lost consecutive games since May 7 and 9. Not since 2018, when Javy Baez was at his zenith, Anthony Rizzo remained a 100-RBI machine and Jon Lester still had the goods, has a Cubs team looked this capable.
That 2018 squad won 95 games but couldn’t fend off a ferocious finishing kick by the Brewers, who stole the division crown in stunning fashion. Is it stupid, man, to think this year’s Cubs aren’t simply in a class by themselves — that the Cardinals, five games back entering the weekend, or the Brewers, 5½ back, might hang in there and eventually make things very interesting?
The Brewers’ recent eight-game winning streak changed the look of their season, or at least their first half. The Cardinals — after starting a disappointing 14-19 — ripped off a nine-game winning streak and ended May on a 19-6 tear, posting baseball’s best record for the month and actually gaining ground on the sizzling Cubs, who went 18-9.
“Yeah, I think we can keep it up,” said second baseman Brendan Donovan, soon to be a first-time All-Star, who has had three or more hits in an MLB-leading 10 games. “Good combination of veterans and young guys, guys like myself in the middle, a good blend of everything. I think all the good teams have that. Why not continue on this trajectory and see where we’re at after 162 games?”
The Cardinals’ most productive hitter during their blistering stretch was former Cubs catcher Willson Contreras, who wears a first baseman’s glove these days and has taken to the position well. On a come-from-behind team — the Cardinals trailed in six of their last seven wins entering a weekend series against the Dodgers — Contreras was leading the way with seven game-winning RBI.
In the first game of Thursday’s doubleheader against the Royals, the Cardinals trailed 3-0 in the seventh inning, look the lead on Ivan Herrera’s homer in the eighth, lost the lead in the ninth thanks to a blown save for Ryan Hensley and finally rallied for two runs in the 10th, with Contreras — playing his 1,000th career game — driving in Nootbar with a base hit.
Willy? He will!
Willson Contreras walks it off in his 1,000th career game! pic.twitter.com/OPs0aelVwr
— MLB (@MLB) June 5, 2025
“The big thing is having that belief,” Nootbar said in Texas. “The past couple of years, I don’t think guys were confident that we were able to put a good string of baseball together. But now it’s, ‘OK, this is what we should be doing. Knowing we’re able to win these ballgames as opposed to finding ways to lose them is huge.”
As Opening Day neared, manager Oliver Marmol asked the team what it wanted to be known for. Cardinals players kept coming back to the word “relentless.” It has shown up in the forms of comebacks, electric defense by youngsters such as shortstop Masyn Winn and center fielder Victor Scott II, and key moments of veteran influence from pitchers Mikolas and Sonny Gray, third baseman Nolan Arenado and especially Contreras.
The Cubs will get heavy doses of all of them as the rivals — who don’t meet until June 23 — play 13 times against each other from there.
“It’s really fun when both teams are playing good,” Contreras said. “We’ll see what happens. But as of now, we’re really happy where we are. It doesn’t matter who we’re facing.”
Asked which of his Cubs teams this Cardinals team is most like, Contreras, still sweating from a rigorous pregame workout, took a long drink of water and thought about it. He mentioned 2017 — his first full season — when the Cubs won 92 games and reached the NLCS. He mentioned 2021, before the selloff of Rizzo, Baez and Kris Bryant.
But guess where he landed?
“I know ’16 was a special team — we won the World Series over there — but we did have the balance with young guys and veteran guys, and it’s kind of the same here,” he said. “We don’t have as many veteran guys, but we have the young talent and the sky’s the limit for them.”
Marmol said of the playoff question, “I love our work ethic, I’ll tell you that. I really do. It’s pretty special.”
There’s a word for it.
“Relentless,” Contreras said. “It’s true. But there’s still a lot of work to do, and the Cubs are playing really well, playing very good ball. We will try to keep up.”
It’ll be stupid fun, man, if they do.
