Cubs try ramping down expectations after hot start

10:20 PM ET

CHICAGO — For all the Chicago Cubs fans waving “Next Year Is Here!” signs, all the Las Vegas oddsmakers who have declared the Cubs as prohibitive favorites to win the World Series, and all the sports reporters who are measuring the Cubs’ start against the starts of the greatest teams in major league history, Cubs president Theo Epstein has a simple message: Slow down.

Epstein believes the Cubs, who took an MLB-best 24-6 record into Tuesday night’s game with the San Diego Padres at Wrigley Field, haven’t had the kind of sustained success to warrant such accolades — and it makes him uneasy.

“Baseball karma is real,” he said before Tuesday’s game. “When you see some of the stuff written about us in the winter and you see some of the World Series odds and things like that for a team that is the defending third-place team [in the NL Central] and hasn’t done anything yet … you get uncomfortable because there are teams that have gone out and earned it.

“The Atlanta Braves made the postseason 14 straight times, the San Francisco Giants won three out of five World Series, the Yankees and the Red Sox are in the postseason every year, and the Cardinals. Those are teams that should be lauded for their accomplishments.”

There’s no doubt the young Cubs have the potential to join those teams, but right now the word “potential” simply means they aren’t there now.

While he’s excited about the Cubs’ 24-6 start to the season, team president Theo Epstein is wary of getting too carried away with expectations. Kyle …

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