WILL THE REAL CUBS PLEASE STAND UP?

After blistering 25- 6 start, team just barely above .500 in its last 50 games

On May 10, the Cubs beat the Padres 8- 7 to raise their record to 25- 6. Remember the wonder of that start, the rosiness of it? The biggest struggles in life had to do with bad songs stuck in your head or work meetings that wouldn’t end.

Those days are long gone. Since getting past the Padres to extend their winning streak to eight games, the Cubs are 26- 24. If you really want to torture yourself, throw out their recent three- game sweep of the Triple- A Reds and wallow in the knowledge that the Cubs have lost 10 of their last 11 games.

Lots of people have carried on as though the winning hasn’t stopped, as though the beer hasn’t stopped flowing. But this hasn’t been the same team the last 50 games. I’ve been guilty at times of peddling the sunny story of the best club in baseball, even though there has been a steady decline since that overcast day at Wrigley Field. But losing four consecutive games to the previously struggling Mets, including a 14- 3 pounding Sunday, should slap some reality into even the most anesthetized among us.

The troubles don’t have to do with injuries. If they do, then center fielder Dexter Fowler, out with a hamstring strain, deserves to be voted the National League’s most valuable player. The Cubs’ bullpen has been struggling, their bats have been middling and their Cy Young Award winner has been missing.

I knew there would come a time when the Cubs’ starters, after an incredible start, would labor. But I didn’t think it would be Jake Arrieta doing the laboring. He lost to the Mets on Saturday, his second loss in his last three starts. He was done after 5⅓ innings. Before that, he had lasted only five innings in four of his previous seven starts. He has walked 42 batters this season after walking only 48 all of last season. Besides posing naked for ESPN The Magazine, is he being exposed?

Not the same pitcher and not the same team.

You can get high off the fumes of the first 31 games, or you can look soberly at the last 50. What’ll it be?