Cubs president Theo Epstein shares his thoughts on the first half of the season and calls the talk about Chicago possibly setting the regular-season wins record "ridiculous." (1:44)

CHICAGO -- With their historic All-Star moment behind them, seven Chicago Cubs will rejoin their team for the start of the second half Friday with one question in mind: Which Cubs team will show up?

Is it the one that shot out of the gate from spring training en route to baseball's best record, or the one that limped home with the National League's sixth-worst winning percentage in the final weeks?

We can go a long way toward answering that question if we know how the All-Stars are feeling after their journey from Chicago to Pittsburgh to San Diego and now back to Chicago. Did they get any rest?

"I felt rejuvenated today," Anthony Rizzo said after Tuesday's All-Star Game. "The body is fine. These mental days are really nice. ... We plan on having a fun second half. It's going to be entertaining."

We know it will be interesting, but the entertainment comes if they get back to their dominant ways. Odds are they will. The next time the formerly road-weary team boards a plane will be Aug. 4. Road games in Chicago (against the White Sox) and Milwaukee, combined with 14 games at Wrigley Field, set them up for a post-All-Star break run similar to the one they went on last year. As for their disastrous play before the break, pitcher Jon Lester opined on his team's plight during media day at the All-Star Game on Monday.

"I was talking to [bench coach] Davey Martinez," Lester said. "He had a good point. The more you think about it, the more it's true. It seems like every year, two weeks before the break or after the break, something crazy happens. I think you saw that with us and even around baseball. You saw a spike in home runs and offenses and all this stuff. Hopefully they got that all out of their system and we can come back and get back to playing normal games. We usually don't play back-and-forth games like that. Maybe 3-2, not 7-6. I think every win in those last couple weeks was important to try and get us back going. Maybe Sunday was it. Our pitching staff was not its normal self. This break will be good."

The numbers back up Lester. We already know the Cubs were struggling, but did you realize the first-place Texas Rangers –- this weekend's opponent -– went 5-9 over the past two weeks? That's the exact same record as the Cubs. There's more. The division-leading Baltimore Orioles went 6-6, and the formerly red-hot Cleveland Indians finished up 8-6. Only the Washington Nationals went on a run, going 10-4 before the break.

As for offense around the league, batters have had their way recently. According to ESPN Stats & Information, runs per game increased from 4.43 to 4.93 in the final two weeks before the break, batting averages jumped 12 points and the league OPS increased from .737 to .770. Those numbers even had baseball commissioner Rob Manfred addressing the issue at the All-Star Game. He didn't have any good answers and neither do the Cubs –- except that grueling schedule.

Kris Bryant is greeted in the dugout after his first-inning home run Tuesday in the All-Star Game in San Diego. The Cubs open the second half at home against the Rangers. Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images

Now maybe you don't care about the numbers around baseball and you don't want to hear about rough travel or you're sick of hearing the word "fatigue." If it all sounds like excuses, Cubs manager Joe Maddon gets it. But he says he believes there's a fine line between an excuse and a reason.

"It depends on who's listening," he said before the break. "The people that want to be more negative or skeptical will see it as an excuse. People that are more pragmatic or logical see it as a reason.

"You don't want to throw that [travel] out there as an excuse. What's nice is what's going to happen afterwards. It gets better."

It gets a whole lot better, so we'll soon have a good idea as to what was causing the Cubs so many problems.

"It's been a run without a break," he said. "Fatigue enters in for everybody, if they want to admit it or not. It was a tough three weeks. It was a fatigue situation more than anything. When you're fatigued, you try to manufacture something that's not there."

Isn't that the exact way to describe some of the Cubs' mistakes pre-break? Think of the baserunning errors or poor decisions in the field. Maybe they all stemmed from that brutal grind, which included 23 of 33 games on the road. But that's all behind them now. A couple of days in beautiful San Diego might have been the trick, and now they get a couple of more days before starting up again.

"This was the perfect couple days to hit that reset button," Kris Bryant said. "A much-needed All-Star break, especially for the Cubs."

Ben Zobrist was already seeing the benefit for a young player such as Addison Russell, since confidence is everything in baseball.

"It's a good memory whether you get a hit or not," Zobrist said. "This will be really good for him and we still have two days off."

Of course, Bryant doesn't need a confidence boost, but his All-Star Game home run Tuesday is just another confirmation that he's already one of the best young players in the game.

"The biggest stage you can be on right now and he shined like he always does," Rizzo said.

As important as rest is for the Cubs, getting healthy is also a priority. Zobrist made a point of telling anyone who would listen that the absence of Dexter Fowler (hamstring) and David Ross (concussion) cost the Cubs more than production.

"When those guys are out or get injured, that crushes a team," Zobrist said. "They give us energy."

So does playing in an All-Star Game. To a man, the Cubs All-Stars said they felt rejuvenated within hours of arriving in San Diego. We will find out how true that is starting Friday, when the best of the American League visits Wrigley Field.

Zobrist was asked if playing the first-place Rangers gives the series some special meaning. Pausing before answering, Zobrist responded: "I wish it did, but it doesn't because it's July and we're coming out of the All-Star break. We have to focus on what we're doing and our execution. We haven't executed very well the last few weeks.

"It [the schedule] beat us up a little bit. It happens."

Reason or excuse? We'll find out soon.