The Cubs face reality of their challenge after Game 2 loss

CHICAGO — Joe Maddon didn’t designate a theme for the Chicago Cubs’ trip out west for the middle three games of the NLCS, but it wasn’t necessary on Sunday night.

Each member of the team who came out to talk draped himself in clichés from “just gotta keep grinding” to “that’s baseball” to “we just have to win the first one in front of us.”

Here’s one they didn’t include but should have following a frustrating 1-0 NLCS Game 2 loss to starter Clayton Kershaw, closer Kenley Jansen and the rest of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

No one said this was going to be easy.

Except for, you know, all those people here in town who assumed this NLCS, which is now tied at one game apiece, was going to be easy.

It’s been a weird thing to be in Chicago since about mid-April. As the Cubs charged to a major-league best 103 wins, an unfamiliar feeling of confidence swept into the fanbase’s bloodstream, replacing heretofore chronic traces of dread, doubt and loathing.

The Cubs in the World Series? Well, it was just a natural extension of the season, something that fans felt OK believing in after seeing the team christened as favorites in Vegas and buying into Maddon’s levelheaded approach to the sport.

“Don’t ever let the pressure exceed the pleasure,” Maddon said at his introductory press conference in November 2014 and Cubs fans have only been too happy to comply.

And that’s fine. Letting the pressure exceed the pleasure makes it OK to do the perfectly acceptable thing and acknowledge that losing to Kershaw is something that’s going to happen. It allows you to see that last year’s ace, Jake Arrieta, will be starting Game 3 at Dodger Stadium, site of one of the two no-hitters he’s thrown in the last two seasons.

At the same time, it can turn that coveted trip to the World Series into an assumed eventuality. When you start to hear fans talk about which American League team they’d prefer to see the Cubs face, you get the impression they believe the Dodgers — a team containing a nice mix of veteran playoff experience with youngsters with plenty of potential — are a cakewalk.

But they aren’t. Anthony Rizzo said after Game 2 that the series was now a “race to three” victories. There’s a maximum of five games left and rest assured that most if not all of them will be decided by a slim margin. We’ve already seen it twice in two nights this series.

Saturday’s Game 1 was decided when Dodgers’ Joe Blanton was one pitch away from retiring Miguel Montero with the bases loaded and the game tied in the eighth inning, but Blanton hung a slider that Montero angrily converted into a grand slam instead.

Game 2 was decided by one swing of the bat in the top of the second when Adrian Gonzalez put a ball in the left-field basket for the first and only run of the game.

The good news for the Cubs is that they’ve been pitching and playing the kind of defense that not only wins championships, but masks the shortcomings we’ve seen from the team’s offense this postseason.

The bulk of the team’s runs so far have been produced by Kris Bryant, Javier Baez and a motley crew of pitchers and a pinch-hitting No. 3 catcher. Rizzo, Addison Russell and Jason Heyward, meanwhile, have struggled to produce, which has killed the prospects of many a long inning.

Offensive outages are going to happen. Even the 103-win Cubs, who scored 808 runs during the season, were shut out six times in 2016. Two of those instances came against the Dodgers and, in games started by pitchers decidedly less accomplished than Kershaw: Scott Kazmir and Brock Stewart.

There can’t be many more struggles, though, because the punchless Cubs passed on an opportunity to maintain a healthy margin of error by defeating Kershaw and taking a 2-0 lead in the series. Lose just one in Los Angeles and the series comes back here next Saturday with Kershaw likely to take the mound. Lose two and that game could be for the Cubs’ playoff lives.

Needless to say, the mood at Wrigley Field wouldn’t be rooted in any feelgood Maddonisms or regular-season win totals if that were to happen.

There’s no doubt the Cubs are still in a good spot. Anyone in baseball would take Arrieta and John Lackey in the next two games over Rich Hill and 20-year-old Julio Urias. They’d take the Cubs lineup over the Dodgers and probably Maddon over Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.

But there’s no such thing as a sure thing in the postseason. If the Cubs are to reach their first World Series since 1945, they’ll need to do it on a foundation of those familiar clichés.

Take each at-bat as it comes. Ninety feet by ninety feet. One win at a time.

And don’t forget, Chicago, there’s a reason those guys are major league baseball players too.

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Kevin Kaduk is a writer for Yahoo Sports.. Have a tip? Email him at kevinkaduk@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KevinKaduk