CHICAGO — If I had told you in late March that by the third week of June, Pete Crow-Armstrong would be the major-league leader in WAR, you probably would have thought it would bode well for the Cubs’ fortunes.MVP PCA for the first-place Cubs, right?Well, as of June 21, Crow-Armstrong’s 4.6 fWAR led his peers in both leagues, but the 40-37 Cubs are not only not in first place, they’re not particularly close, just one of a gaggle of teams in the NL wild-card hunt.This is a team theoretically built to win the NL Central. This is also a team that might be fortunate to get a wild-card berth.In years past, we’ve called on owner Tom Ricketts to open the purse strings for president Jed Hoyer. And we’ve called on Hoyer to get aggressive at the trade deadline. Hoyer had the budget to add Alex Bregman this offseason, and he made a smart trade to add starting pitcher Edward Cabrera. He shuffled the bullpen and signed his young players to extensions.What has changed for Pete Crow-Armstrong in 2026?Derek VanRiper and Patrick MooneyBut when it comes to this year’s trade deadline, which will be here before you know it, Hoyer sounds less than enthused about making a big move given the Cubs’ place in the NL Central.“Your World Series odds are probably going to be correlated to your odds of getting a bye,” Hoyer said two weeks ago. “Getting a bye is such a big deal. It’s effectively not only winning one round but also, by getting a bye, in theory, you’re playing an opponent that should be in a lesser state. The Brewers got a bye last year, and Matt Boyd threw on three days’ rest. The bye is that important. If you want to look at it differently, I’d say a lot of the aggressiveness is based on the ability to get a bye.”Going into Monday, the Cubs are seven games behind Milwaukee. Their odds of overtaking the Brewers and winning the division are somewhere between 0 (reality) and 23 percent (PECOTA).The trade deadline isn’t saving this team. It has to save itself.After a family vacation a few time zones away, I went to Wrigley Field on Saturday to see what I had missed. What I saw was indicative of what this team has been over the past two months: just a frustrating watch.The Cubs were vying for their second winning streak in the past six weeks. It was warm and sunny, a perfect Saturday at Wrigley Field. They had defeated the Blue Jays 16-2 on Friday for their second win in a row. That elusive third consecutive win seemed imminent.