As the Chicago Cubs try to put some pressure on the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central, it has been encouraging to see the team starting to play better once again.

After the unfortunate sweep against the San Francisco Giants, the Cubs have been able to bounce back with series wins against the Colorado Rockies and Atlanta Braves back-to-back.

Now, the team will be heading to face another opponent under the .500 mark in the Washington Nationals, with a chance to perhaps continue to build some momentum. The second half of the year hasn’t been nearly as good as the first for Chicago, but this is still a team that will likely be in the postseason.

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While the Cubs will have to finish strong to get into the playoffs, they will be hoping to see the team starting to roll like it did in the first half of the campaign. For that to happen, they will need their offense to once again become elite. Fortunately, after an extended slump, it does appear like the unit, and a key player are heating up.

Jordan Bastian of MLB recently wrote about Cubs star Kyle Tucker being the player with the most to prove heading down the stretch.

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The poor performance of the star slugger in July and for most of August is directly correlated with the team struggling to produce on offense. Tucker was reportedly dealing with a hand injury throughout this time that came out after the fact, and with a couple of days off here and there, he has seemingly gotten healthy and is getting back on track.

Chicago brought Tucker in to be the star and the catalyst in the middle of the lineup, and he has clearly had a massive impact on those around him. When the outfielder struggled, so did the offense. Now that he is starting to heat up again, things have much improved offensively for the Cubs.

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While Tucker is certainly important for the team down the stretch, so is fellow outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong. The young outfielder was also having an NL MVP-caliber campaign in the first half, but his production has fallen off significantly as well.

If the Cubs can get their two star outfielders back to where they were or close to it from the first half of the season, the sky is the limit for this team once October comes around.

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