Maybe it’s time for Cubs to hoist a mug and wave white flag

Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer has taken some heat for not being more aggressive at the trade deadline.

But maybe he deserves credit: For recognizing a lost cause when he sees one.

The Cubs could snap out of their hitting slump. They could pitch more consistently when a couple injured starters return.

But they're also stuck in a division with the greatest baseball team of all time. There may be nothing left to do besides hoist an ale and grill a bratwurst in tribute to the mighty Milwaukee Brewers.

There is numerical proof of the Brew Crew being the greatest team of all time. Since May 25, the Brewers have gone 45-16, a .737 winning percentage. Over the course of 162 games, that equates to 119 wins. How is any team supposed to compete with that?

This is not to suggest the Brewers are the most likable squad in MLB. Their fans still boo Cubs manager Craig Counsell loudly for his supposed disloyalty to the Dairy State.

Look, I get it. Some of us feel the same way when we see a car with a Wisconsin license plate driving in the left lane of the Tri-State Tollway. It's both depressing and time-consuming.

Anyway, on the baseball field, the Brewers have an uncanny knack for bringing out the best in players. Remember how bad Andrew Vaughn was with the White Sox early this season? He got demoted to Triple-A Charlotte for gosh sakes.

Now Vaughn has 7 home runs, 28 RBI and a 1.145 OPS in 22 games for Milwaukee. Keep this up and he'll have more claim to National League MVP than Shohei Ohtani.

Cary-Grove High School grad Quinn Priester is another example. Drafted in the first round by Pittsburgh in 2019, his own team gave up on him last year. He was toiling in Triple-A for the Red Sox when Milwaukee made a trade in April.

Since then, Priester is 11-2 with a 3.15 ERA. Another player with suburban roots, Lake Forest's Caleb Durbin, is playing third base for the Brewers.

It would be easy to say the Brewers have found that secret sauce. But those of us old enough to have visited County Stadium know the Brewers had the secret sauce — sort of a ketchup-barbecue blend, they dunked hot dogs in it — and it disappeared when they moved into the Milwaukee Ball Mall.

So who knows how the Brewers are getting this done? Counsell might have an idea, but he never has much to say about his former team.

“They're playing well,” Counsell said this week. “I don't really spend much time thinking about that. Again, we have five more games where we can control their outcomes, and time spent worrying about them other than that is not helpful.”

After losing at Wrigley Field on June 17, the Brewers trailed the Cubs by 6½ games in the NL Central. Less than two months later, the Crew leads by 4 games and have shown no signs of wilting. Milwaukee just finished a 6-0 road trip to Washington and Atlanta.

For most of the season, none of their hitters stood out. The Brewers seemed to be a team where the entire lineup would go 1-for-4 at the plate every night, and somehow turn that into 6 runs.

That perception is changing. Since the all-star break, the Brewers are tied for third in MLB in OPS. They're tied with the White Sox, believe it or not, trailing Toronto and West Sacramento. And their best hitter besides Vaughn, Jackson Chourio, hasn't played since he limped off the field against the Cubs on July 29.

As Counsell mentioned, there is that five-game series at Wrigley Field coming up Aug. 18-21, which includes a rescheduled rain out from June.

Even if the Cubs win three of the five, they only move one-game closer in the standings. Let's face it, this Brewers juggernaut may never lose again.