Photo by Jon Godorf via Twitter

If the old adage ‘defense wins championships’ applies to baseball, then the Chicago Cubs quest to repeat as World Series champions is in serious jeopardy.

After sporting the best team defense in the MLB last season (by ultimate zone rating and defensive runs saved), the Cubs haven’t been able to carry over that success to the beginning of 2017.

Through 49 games, the Cubs are tied for the second most errors in the MLB with 37 blunders up to this point. Associated with all the errors is the teams poor defensive efficiency this season (rate at which balls put in play are converted into outs). The Cubs rank 26th in the MLB in this category with a .699 defensive efficiency.

Other advanced metrics are revealing as well. Last season, the Cubs led the MLB by a significant margin in regular season ultimate zone rating (73.0). Thus far this season, they rank 13th in this category with a negative value.

UZR as Explained by FanGraphs.com

Despite all the errors and the poor UZR, the Cub have still saved a lot of runs defensively; seven to be exact which ranks eighth in the MLB up to this point. The Cubs gifted defenders are still making highlight-reel plays at a good clip. Even in the disastrous Los Angeles Dodgers series, the Cubs recorded some great plays defensively.

It’s not really the spectacular plays that have been lacking for the Cubs this season. Rather, they haven’t made the routine plays, and the high error count contrasted with the large number of runs the Cubs are still saving defensively highlights this important distinction.

In terms of the source of the problem, the Cubs issues defensively stem from a combination of young players experiencing growing pains as they learn to play at the MLB level, and normally spectacular defenders having worse seasons than a year ago.

Kyle Schwarber is the 24th-best left fielder in the MLB in terms of UZR (0.7). Although some of his teammates have evened out his poor play with their own play in left field, the Cubs have a collective 1.2 UZR at this position which is 11th in the MLB. In contrast, the Cubs finished second in the MLB at this position last season based on UZR. Similarly, despite the superbly strong arm, catcher Willson Contreras leads the team in errors with eight this season. Miguel Montero only had seven errors in 71 games behind the plate last season. The Cubs have platooned several players in center field this year, collectively recording a -1 UZR which is 18th-best in the league. With Fowler doing the brunt of the work in center field last season, the Cubs had a 9.3 UZR which was third best in the MLB.

Then there are the elite defenders that have struggled this year. Addison Russell is 28th in the MLB with a 0.2 UZR after finishing fourth in this category a season ago. The routine plays have killed Russell, as he’s already accumulated four errors on the year. Kris Bryant has been even worse, recording six errors and a Cubs-infield low 95.4 percent fielding percentage.

Perhaps most disappointing of all is reigning Gold Glove winner Anthony Rizzo who has three errors to his name and is 55th in UZR after finishing fourth in this category a season ago. To make matters worse, Rizzo isn’t living up to the Platinum Glove Award standard that he established when he won the award last season for being the best overall defender at any position in the National League as voted for by fans.

Defense isn’t the Cubs biggest issue, but it’s something that they need to shore up moving forward if they want to return to the level of play that made them World Series champions a season ago.

Thankfully, there is reason to believe that the Cubs defense will improve as the season progresses. Most of the errors are a result of a lack of focus, which is more easily correctable than a lack of talent. Furthermore, as guys like Contreras and Ian Happ receive more repetitions defensively, they will improve. The talent is already noticeably there for both players.

Finally, elite defenders like Russell and Rizzo can’t stay below average forever. They will gradually positively regress towards their career norms, and the Cubs defense will benefit as a result.

A 162-game regular season tends to serve as the ultimate equalizer. The Cubs poor defense is annoying more than anything else because we’ve seen how high the ceiling is for many of these players on this side of the ball.

Paul Steeno spent 11 years pretending he was good at running. After hanging up the track spikes and officially becoming an elite hobby jogger, he decided to do something that he was actually good at: like writing about the Cubs. He is also a perpetually frustrated Chicago Bulls fan. This one time he got super lucky and ran 3:52 in the 1500-meter run.