Remember when the Cubs were playing through the toughest schedule in the history of the game? They fared quite well and were going to face an incredibly easy schedule to follow. In case you haven’t watched every game in the past 10 days, you’ve missed a rough week with the team losing back-to back series. Lost in all of this is they aren’t playing at full strength right now.

All that should change post haste. Within the next hour, they will be facing the Marlins at Wrigley in the first of three games. They then host the woeful (but slightly better) White Sox for three games. This was and is the stretch when they rebound and reassert themselves as favorites in the NL Central.

I would have suggested that Chicago’s night life might prove to be too much for the Marlins, but the next three games are night games. (They just finished a three-game series at the Rate over the weekend.