Chicago Cubs open 2nd half with a bang vs. Boston Red Sox

The All-Star break is considered a time for players to catch their breath, decompress and get ready for the second-half push.

But for Chicago Cubs fans who watched their team outperform expectations in the first half, the break was just four more days of worrying about whom President Jed Hoyer will acquire at the trade deadline and how they’ll fend off the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central.

There’s no vacation from fretting on the North Side, especially after four straight October-free seasons.

It wasn’t always like this.

Blame former President Theo Epstein for ramping up the anxiety level for Cubs fans, who grew accustomed to watching their team contend for the postseason from 2015 on and began taking it for granted until Epstein left after the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Now Epstein is back in Boston as a part-owner and senior adviser to Red Sox owner John Henry, while Hoyer, his longtime baseball partner and BFF, has constructed a club that appears strong enough to get back to the World Series, assuming it avoids regression in the second half.

That’s why the Cubs-Red Sox series, which begins Friday, should bring a playoff atmosphere to Wrigley Field.

Epstein will miss a chance at watching a homecoming video and waving to the crowd from Crane Kenney’s suite. He said he’ll be celebrating his son’s birthday back home, and family comes first.

But Epstein figures to be checking his phone for updates, or stray texts from Hoyer, depending on the outcome of the games. A legendary curse-breaker in Chicago and Boston, Epstein’s presence will be felt all weekend.

The Cubs face a Red Sox team that won 10 straight before the break, confounding the experts who left them for dead only one month ago. That was after chief of baseball operations Craig Breslow, whom Epstein hired in Chicago in 2019 and who worked under Hoyer from 2021-23, dealt slugger Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants in the season’s biggest and most shocking trade to date.

Devers had been in the spotlight since his public display of unhappiness over being moved off third base for free agent Alex Bregman. Breslow flew to Seattle to be with the team after the trade so any player could voice his opinion.

No clubhouse meeting. No drama. Just available for consultation.

“I just tried to grab guys one at a time and check in, see if they have any questions, make sure I’m reinforcing our belief in this group and if they have anything that they want to raise with me,” Breslow said, according to the Boston Globe. “From asking a question to venting, I’m here for it. I just feel like people tend to be a little more comfortable in a one-on-one-type environment.”

The second-year showrunner of this Red Sox miniseries was pillaged for the move, much like Hoyer was after the memorable summer sell-off of 2021, when he dealt stars Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Javier Báez at the deadline.

But Breslow appears to have come out smelling like a rose. The Red Sox (53-45) are three games behind the first-place Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East and one game behind the New York Yankees.

“Just playing really good ball,” starter Garrett Crochet said. “We’ve won in a lot of different ways, on the heels of the starting staff, on the heels of the bullpen, via the long ball and via slap-hitting the other way. We’re just showing a true hunger and desire to win by any means necessary.

“We’re winning the one-run games, and before we were losing them. Those games can always go either way, and right now we’re finding a way to make them go ours, which I think is what makes a good ballclub. At the end of the year, typically the last ones standing at the dance are the ones that win those games.”

Crochet, the former White Sox star, was coming off a 121-loss season, the most in modern-day history. Now he is on the hottest team in baseball, like going from the outhouse to the penthouse. How much sweeter could it be?

“It’s something I hadn’t thought about until you mentioned it,” he said. “It does seem to make it a little bit more fun in hindsight.”

Crochet, who declined a chance to pitch in the All-Star Game for added rest, is scheduled to start Sunday’s finale. Another former White Sox pitcher, Lucas Giolito, will face Colin Rea in Friday’s opener, and Shota Imanaga matches up against Brayan Bello on Saturday night in a game nationally televised on Fox.

The Cubs are a season-high 18 games over .500, and with the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers looking a bit more vulnerable than they appeared during the opening series in Tokyo, expectations in Chicago have soared. And as former manager Lou Piniella once opined, Cubs fans tend to treat wins like it’s the World Series and losses like it’s the end of the world.

The Brewers, meanwhile, have crept within one game and have the division’s best starting pitching, headed by Freddy Peralta and rookie phenom Jacob “the Miz” Misiorowski, who has yet to face the Cubs in his five major-league starts.

The secret to the Cubs’ success has been an ability to avoid prolonged skids. Their longest winning streak is only five games, but their longest losing streak is only three, and they’ve yet to get swept in a three-game series.

All-Star Matthew Boyd’s consistency and the return of Imanaga have buoyed a rotation that has been sideswiped by injuries since Justin Steele’s season-ending elbow surgery in April. An experienced bullpen crew with a first-time closer in Daniel Palencia has overcome doubters. But the scars of Hoyer’s past bullpen constructions haven’t healed completely, so fans will always be on high alert with the so-called “out-getters.”

Manager Craig Counsell has been heavily scrutinized over his lineups, but the Cubs rank second in the majors in runs scored with 512, behind the Dodgers’ 518 (in one more game), so he just might know what he’s doing.

Kyle Tucker, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Seiya Suzuki and Michael Busch have been the catalysts, and when everyone is clicking it can be lethal. But sometimes it’s like hitting the control-delete button on a perfectly phrased sentence, and the offensive production disappears without a trace. Deleting those days will be important, and Counsell used Nico Hoerner and Michel Busch as leadoff men last week, suggesting he’s not happy with the status quo.

Crow-Armstrong, having an MVP-caliber season, is the biggest thing to happen to the Cubs since Bryant’s rookie season in 2015, and was introduced to the rest of the world at the All-Star Game, doubling in his first at-bat and avoiding a Cubbie Occurrence in the outfield while being mic’d up by Fox, leading to a communication breakdown with Tucker before Tucker made the catch.