What's happened to the once-invincible Chicago Cubs?

Oh, Chicago, you didn’t think this would be easy, did you? Did you?

That there wouldn’t be 60 or 70 or more nights when the other guys are better? Or luckier? Or healthier? Or not as terrible? That there wouldn’t be hinky bounces and back-up sliders and stale beer and a $184-million .657 OPS in the two-hole and .500-ish ball for seven weeks?

Really. Seven weeks.

Well, here’s your gentle reminder the disabled list was invented for a reason, and so were emotional frailties to go along with those structural frailties, and so were wind-blown home runs and other neck-shots whose spreadsheet column header reads, “I don’t know, man, stuff just happens.”

Here’s also your gentle reminder about bullpens, their fundamental volatility and, in this case, an ERA that was 2.72 in April, 3.80 in May, 3.96 in June and you don’t wanna know in July. OK, it’s about 5 1/2. And then about replicating career years, so Jason Heyward is for the moment out of the two-hole, as he’s helpless even against right-handers, and Jake Arrieta has hit a funky patch, and Ben Zobrist has hit .220 for a month, and other uncomfortable details, all of which happen.

Maybe, Chicago, you think you had this season coming, all blue skies and W flags. You’d have a reasonable argument. And if it works out, just promise you’ll spare us the now-we-can-die-in-peace epitaphs, because you won’t, and the rest of us will find it tiresome.

Anyway, a little perspective: know that in the past 20 years there’ve been only 20 teams to win as many as 100 games, and of those 20 teams only two – the 1998 and 2009 Yankees – won the World Series, too, which is to say it’s hard to win 100 games and way, way harder to win the World Series, and one has little to do with the other.

If your Cubs play exactly .500 ball the rest of the summer — and they won’t, but if they do — it won’t feel good, but they’ll win 87 games. Even at that worst-case slog for the Cubs, the Cardinals would have to win at a much better pace than they have for three months. It’s possible, but they’ve had a .500-ish seven weeks, too.

That’s it for the perspective.

The Cubs have played beneath themselves for just long enough to wonder if they’re the 27-25 Cubs or the 25-6 Cubs, which is maybe a little too real to dwell on. Let’s just say they’re the 52-31 Cubs, which, in Chicago, should feel like blue skies and W flags and a massive lead in the NL Central. It’s as easy as it’s going to get.

The sting of four losses to the Mets in New York (following the sting of four losses to the Mets in October) lingered only because it looked so much like more of the same, only more thorough. And it was nothing the Reds couldn’t soothe for a day, anyway.

On the bright side, only three more games against the Mets. Until, maybe, you know …