Borussia Dortmund have signed Thorgan Hazard from Borussia Monchengladbach for a reported transfer fee of €25.5 million, excluding add-ons.

Thorgan, who has signed a five-year contract with Dortmund, becomes the first Hazard to move this summer with his older brother Eden linked with a transfer from Chelsea to Real Madrid.

"We are delighted, Thorgan has opted for Borussia Dortmund with his full conviction," BVB sporting director Michael Zorc said. "He's an experienced Bundesliga player and a Belgium international. He will help us with his pace and his nose for goals."

HA⚡️ARD pic.twitter.com/1tQniD6gkP

— Borussia Dortmund (@BlackYellow) May 22, 2019

Like his brother Eden, Hazard had been on the books at Chelsea, but left the club for Gladbach in 2014, initially on a loan and then on a permanent transfer. In his five years for the Foals, Hazard contributed 46 goals and a further 44 assists in 182 appearances across all competitions.

"I am thankful for five great years at Gladbach," Hazard said, adding that it was time to make the next step in his career. "I am proud to be able to play for Borussia Dortmund, a top club with incredible fans."

Hazard becomes Dortmund's second transfer this summer. Earlier this week, BVB signed Hoffenheim and Germany left-back Nico Schulz for a similar fee and soon after signing Hazard they announced a deal had been struck to sign Germany international Julian Brandt from Bayer Leverkusen.

The Bundesliga runners-up have said they finally want to break Bayern Munich's seven-year-long dominance of German football next term and are closing in on adding Barcelona defender Mateu Morey.

Other than United States international Christian Pulisic, who has joined Chelsea for €64m, no player has left the club yet.

However, former Manchester United midfielder Shinji Kagawa and 2014 World Cup winner Andre Schurrle are among those deemed surplus to requirements.

Ricky Ponting has declared that Australia's World Cup chances will be defined by how well Aaron Finch's team use spin bowling and also bat against it, having only recently placed fresh emphasis on this component of their ODI set-up after ignoring it for some years.

Part of Justin Langer's coaching group as an assistant for the tournament, Ponting provides enormous experience both of playing in World Cups - the 1996, 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011 editions - but also winning three in a row from 1999 to 2007. Finch, Steven Smith, David Warner, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc, as well as assistant coach Brad Haddin, were all part of the victorious team at the 2015 tournament on home soil.

That success was underpinned largely by top order runs and Starc's furiously fast, hyper-aggressive bowling, with the Australians choosing their specialist spin bowler Xavier Doherty for only one match in the entire tournament. However this time around, Adam Zampa and Nathan Lyon loom as key components of the team, while Ponting also pointed out that the proliferation of spin bowlers among the world's leading teams in the past three years have also raised the emphasis on playing spin bowling adroitly.

"The thing that will define Australia's success in the World Cup is, one, how well they bowl spin and, two, how well they play it," Ponting told The Telegraph. "That's been their Achilles' heel the last 12 or 18 months. With [Adam] Zampa bowling well now, Nathan Lyon's obviously in the squad and Glenn Maxwell's done a good job with the ball whenever he's played.

"And I think some of our middle order are probably slightly better players of spin now than they were 12 or 18 months ago. With Warner there now and Steve Smith coming back in, the middle order looks a lot better against spin bowling than it probably was."

"Australia's got a very proud history. I know that'll be something that will be spoken about within the group." Ricky Ponting

Smith and Warner have returned to Australia's set-up after 12-month bans over the ball tampering scandal in South Africa last year. Ponting acknowledged the level of criticism the pair were likely to attract from English crowds, but said it was more important to see signs that both Smith and Warner were finding form at the right time.

"They're both playing really well. Steve Smith still thinks he's not probably 100% fit just yet - but he's not far away. And Warner's been the dominant batsman in the IPL," Ponting said. "Those two coming in, obviously they're class players - they'll have their fair share of issues to deal with from the crowds and stuff when they get over there. But they're big boys. They've been there and seen it all before. I'm sure they'll be fine."

Assessing the way that a successful team would navigate the tournament, which is using a round robin and semi-finals format for the first time since the 1992 event in Australia and New Zealand, Ponting said that Finch's team could recall past Australian victories to provide inspiration and knowledge of the need to avoid peaking too early.

"I guess that's probably one of the reasons they've got me involved - having been around some successful World Cup campaigns," Ponting said. "Tournament play is a different thing, it's not just another five-game series or three-game series. This is all about a pretty long tournament of one-day cricket.

"You've got to find a way to build your way into the tournament and make sure you're playing your best cricket at the back alley. That's one thing Australian teams have always done. They've tended to play their best cricket in the World Cups and when it has mattered in the big games.

"Australia's got a very proud history. I know that'll be something that will be spoken about within the group. But it's also a chance for this current group of players to make a name for themselves on the world stage and a chance for them all to become World Cup winners as well."

As captain, Finch had faced plenty of speculation over his place during an extended run of low scores. But the team's unexpected series win in India was accompanied by the first signs that Finch was returning to batting touch, and a subsequent series win over Pakistan in the UAE brought runs for the entire top order before it was bolstered by Smith and Warner.

"The fact that Aaron Finch has just had a bit of success lately as captain and had got himself back into the runs after a pretty lean 12 months with the bat, that'll give him a lot of confidence going into this World Cup," Ponting said. "To beat India in India for him as a captain is a big feather in his cap."

"They've got a really good chance - I've been saying that for 12 months. It looks like a lot of the work that Justin and the senior players have done around the group is starting to pay off."

The NBA has made the late decision to cancel the NBA Global Camp, a showcase for draft-eligible prospects from outside the United States that was scheduled for May 30 to June 2 in Monaco.

"We have cancelled the NBA Global Camp 2019 due to logistical issues and other contributing factors that jeopardized our ability to successfully conduct the camp," NBA executive vice president of basketball operations Kiki VanDeWeghe said in a statement to ESPN. "The camp will return in the future."

The Global Camp was a new event that came under the NBA umbrella for the first time in 2018, essentially becoming the international version of the NBA combine, with interviews, medical examinations, drills and scrimmages conducted in a similar format to the draft combine in Chicago.

It was spun off of the longtime Adidas EuroCamp event that was conducted annually in Treviso, Italy, starting in 2003, but was abandoned by the sneaker company in the wake of the FBI investigation into college basketball corruption. The NBA elected to officially take over the camp in April 2018, hoping to use it as a vehicle to promote the league on a global scale and also provide exposure for their academies.

"Twenty-five percent of our league are international players," VanDeWeghe told ESPN at the time. "Some of the best players in the NBA are internationals. That will only grow. It's a big world. The NBA is expanding globally. That's an important part. We're invested in academies around the world; we have seven of those currently. Having the ability to spread the knowledge of basketball, to provide great training against great competition -- this is a natural part of that."

After conducting the camp in Treviso last year for its inaugural event, the Global Camp was moving to Monaco this year -- and many NBA teams, players, families, agents and basketball industry executives already have booked their travel to the exotic but expensive destination.

Sources say that confusion over which venues actually were booked by the organizers are among the key reasons for the last-minute cancellation. AS Monaco Basket, a professional team that competes in the French first division, said it was not consulted about the availability of its arena, which was slated to host the Global Camp.

After starting the season 8-9, AS Monaco won 16 of its last 17 games and finished the league in second place. Should the team advance past the quarterfinals of the French playoffs starting on Friday, the arena will be unavailable to the NBA for the dates of the Global Camp due to television production obligations and practice schedules for the teams slated to play in the semifinals, a source told ESPN.

Two auxiliary gyms, which typically are used for high school and amateur league basketball games because of limited seating and infrastructure, would have been the main venues available, something that, sources say, the NBA deemed unacceptable once the extent of the problem was fully discovered.

The decision to withdraw leaves a significant void in the scouting calendar for teams and players alike. A number of international agents told ESPN they only elected to enter their players' names into the draft pool in hopes they would be selected to play at the Global Camp, partially explaining why a record-breaking number of international players were on the early-entry list.

NBA Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert and MVP finalists Giannis Antetokounmpo and Paul George were the leading vote-getters for the All-Defensive first team.

The Boston Celtics' Marcus Smart and the Milwaukee Bucks' Eric Bledsoe rounded out the first team that was announced Wednesday.

Gobert finished with 97 first-team points and 196 points and as a result earned himself a $500,000 bonus from the Jazz. This is the Utah center's third straight first-team selection.

George, an Oklahoma City Thunder forward, had 96 first-team votes and 195 points, followed by Bucks swingman Antetokounmpo (94, 193).

Smart and Bledsoe both earned their first All-Defensive team selections.

The second team included the Golden State Warriors' Draymond Green and Klay Thompson, who earned his first selection. They were joined by the Toronto Raptors' Kawhi Leonard, the Philadelphia 76ers' Joel Embiid and New Orleans Pelicans guard Jrue Holiday, who earned a $100,000 bonus for the honor.

The teams were selected by a panel of 100 writers and broadcasters.

ESPN's Bobby Marks and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

MILWAUKEE -- Much has been made of Kawhi Leonard's occasional limp during Games 3 and 4 of the Eastern Conference finals. And yet, in a conference call with reporters Wednesday ahead of Thursday's Game 5 at Fiserv Forum, Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse maintained that his star will be ready when the ball goes up.

"He's feeling good," Nurse said. "No concerns at this point. He's good."

Nurse wasn't quite ready to say the same, however, about star point guard Kyle Lowry, who has been battling a thumb injury on his left (non-shooting) hand that he suffered during the conference semifinals against the Philadelphia 76ers.

Lowry has been wearing a specially designed oven mitt since to try to speed the healing process, but Nurse admitted the All-Star guard is playing through pain.

"Kyle's hand is not great," Nurse said. "You know, he's -- it's hurt and it's sore and it causes him a lot of pain. But he seems to be able to manage it through the game and do what he can do.

"He's obviously scoring and playing great on top of the other things he always does, and we're really [seeing] a heck of a lot of toughness and again, the spirit that he just wants to be out there and help his team any way he can."

For Lowry on Tuesday night in Game 4, that meant scoring 12 quick points in the first quarter to help the Raptors get a lead, then another six late in the second quarter to help Toronto preserve that advantage at halftime.

Those early points helped lead a wave of scoring from Toronto's supporting cast. That was particularly useful for the Raptors, given that the two players who played 50 minutes in the double-overtime thriller in Game 3, Leonard and Pascal Siakam, both showed signs of fatigue at times in Game 4.

"I think you just don't know how people are going to react," Nurse said. "I think kind of the main narrative is that Kawhi was super tired and extra minutes and all those kind of things. I think we kind of had that in the back of our minds, but you know, you just don't know how guys are going to react when the ball goes up, their adrenaline kicks up, etc.

"I do think Kyle feels like he sees opportunities for himself in these series, and I think Kyle is usually an early, early scorer. He knows leads are precious and he's trying to jump-start that. He was humongous last night. We didn't get off to a great start, and I think he automatically changed that by himself."

Forward OG Anunoby, on the other hand, remains "a ways away" from contributing after undergoing an emergency appendectomy last month.

"OG does not have a timetable for coming back," Nurse said. "He is being more active every day. I think we are getting closer to a point where we're -- you know, unpack is the next step for him. He's moving pretty good, he's shooting, etc., but still a ways away from being able to take hits and contact in the areas that he needs to test out, I guess."

The Raptors, though, remain focused on the task at hand, which is to find a way to do what they couldn't in the first two games of this series: get a win in Milwaukee. (The Bucks have only lost twice in a row all season; they have never lost three times in a row.)

That is the goal for Toronto -- one that, if the Raptors can accomplish it, would allow them to have a chance to clinch a trip to the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history Saturday night back at Scotiabank Arena.

Nurse, though, said that there has been very little talk of the possibilities down the road for the Raptors. Instead, he said the focus has been on the task that it is immediately at hand -- one that won't be easy to solve.

"I think there's been very little," he said. "I'm trying to think of things I've heard and I can really only remember Kyle through the Philly series was immediately over, we were in the locker room and he kind of quieted everybody down and said, 'Hey, listen, you know, enjoy this game, but we've still got a ways to go where we're trying to get to, so let's get back here tomorrow and let's get back to work.' You know, that kind of mentality."

NEW YORK -- Criticized for not running hard, New York Mets second baseman Robinson Cano got hurt hustling up the first-base line.

The 36-year-old slugger left Wednesday night's 6-1 win over the Washington Nationals after straining his left quadriceps.

Cano got hurt when he grounded out in the third inning following J.D. Davis' two-out double. The Mets trailed 1-0 at the time.

"He took a few hard steps out of the box, got about halfway down the line and it grabbed on him,'' manager Mickey Callaway said.

An eight-time All-Star, Cano twice failed to run out grounders last weekend against the Marlins in Miami, both of them resulting in double plays. Callaway said he addressed the issue, and Cano did not start Monday against the Nationals.

Callaway cited Cano's hustle when he doubled to right-center as a pinch hitter on Monday night and slid into second.

"I guess he had his fastest time from home to second [in three years], so I'm sure he was aware that he needs to get going a little bit,'' Callaway said.

Cano is batting .241 with three homers and 13 RBIs in his first season with the Mets. The former New York Yankees star was acquired from the Seattle Mariners in December.

Cano had an MRI during the game. Callaway said he did not yet know the results.

Mets infielder Luis Guillorme was removed from Triple-A Syracuse's game at Lehigh Valley in the fifth inning, a sign Cano could be headed to the injured list.

"They're always proactive during the game,'' Callaway said. "If something like that happens, they'll pull a player out just to make sure he's good to go in case we need him."

BALTIMORE -- CC Sabathia's balky and bothersome right knee could soon be sending him to the New York Yankees' still-full injured list, the veteran left-hander and his manager said following his latest start Wednesday night.

"We have so many injuries, and to kind of pile this on there kind of sucks right now, but this is just something that I need to take care of," the 38-year-old Sabathia said after the Yankees' 7-5 win over the Baltimore Orioles. "Probably take some time [off] just to get the medicine in there and let it kind of work its magic."

Sabathia, who earned his 249th career win Wednesday by striking out seven in a five-inning outing, said he won't be traveling with the Yankees to Kansas City on Thursday night. The Yankees have a three-game series against the Kansas City Royals that follows Thursday's midday series finale in Baltimore.

Instead of joining his teammates, Sabathia will be heading back to New York. He's expecting to get a cortisone shot that day, which will force him to be shut down a few days. Asked if Sabathia could miss his next start, Yankees manager Aaron Boone said: "It's possible." Could this be an IL stint for Sabathia? "It could be," Boone added.

Knee flare-ups like the ones Sabathia said he has been fighting through his past couple of starts have occurred almost yearly for him since 2014. Across much of that time, he has been dealing with inflammation and arthritis in the knee, forcing him to take his share of midseason breaks.

Sabathia has been placed on the IL four times the past six seasons due to right-knee inflammation. In previous years, those stints have included treatments of cortisone, draining of excess fluid in the knee and the administering of a separate fluid that's designed to help lubricate his knee. Pitching with braces around his knee has helped stabilize it, too.

The 19-year veteran also has undergone offseason surgeries to the knee, including one this past winter. That operation preceded an unexpected heart procedure in December. Because of both surgeries, Sabathia was placed on the IL during spring training, and remained there the first two weeks of the season.

Since making his season debut April 13, Sabathia is 3-1 with a 3.48 ERA. He has allowed 35 hits while striking out 34.

"[The knee] always hurts pretty bad when it's like this," Sabathia said. "I would say [the pain] is in the middle. But no, I'm not concerned. I've dealt with this before, the medicine's worked, the brace has worked and I feel pretty good."

The hardest part of pitching with the knee injury is the way it impacts the conclusion of his delivery, Sabathia said.

"It was just hard to land. It's like a shooting pain goes through every time when I land, so it makes it hard to kind of finish my pitches," Sabathia said.

Although he felt the pain all throughout this latest start, it didn't appear to trouble him until the fifth inning, when he gave up his share of hard batted balls.

Sabathia cruised through the first four innings, registering all of his strikeouts within them. He also had allowed only one hit before everything unraveled with two homers and two doubles in the fifth. Of the seven batted balls he allowed in the inning, four were hit with exit velocities of 102 mph or faster. Normally a master of weak contact, those heightened velocities were notable.

"That last inning was a struggle for him," Boone said. "But he battled."

If Sabathia goes back on the IL, he will join the likes of Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Miguel Andujar, Greg Bird, Troy Tulowitzki and Didi Gregorius on it. In all, 12 players are currently on the IL, with as many as 17, including Sabathia, having already spent time sidelined this season.

Journeyman Rajai Davis, who was called up from Triple-A Syracuse on Wednesday and arrived in the third inning of the New York Mets' game with the Washington Nationals, hit a three-run homer in his first at-bat with the team.

Davis took reliever Sean Doolittle deep in the eighth, when the Mets scored six runs with two outs on the way to a 6-1 win in New York.

"I think I saw him in the fifth or the sixth for the first time," Mets manager Mickey Callaway said. "He got here about the third. He Uber'd over, got ready, came out, hit a homer, came inside, didn't know where the clubhouse was, how to get back in, had to ask some people, 'Which way do I go to get back in the clubhouse?' And just slapped high-fives going into the line. Yeah, whirlwind day for Raj; great at-bat."

Davis, 38, who grew up in Norwich, Connecticut, rooting for the Mets, said he found out he had been called up at about 5 p.m. He said he thought his manager was joking at first.

"It was a normal day when it started and then we took BP in Lehigh Valley, PA, in the cage and I found out I was coming up," Davis said. "Thought that the manager was playing around, playing a little joke. But I'm here."

The ride from Lehigh Valley took about two hours, and he said he got to know his driver, Jason, pretty well.

"We were both excited," Davis said.

The Mets are Davis' eighth team in a 13-year career. He's a .262 lifetime hitter, and led the league in steals in 2016 with 43. Last season, with the Cleveland Indians, he homered only once. He matched that Wednesday night.

The roster spot opened when the Mets put outfielder Brandon Nimmo on the 10-day injured list with a stiff neck.

Nimmo, who has struggled at the plate all season, had an MRI on Wednesday after experiencing a sharp pain in his neck earlier in the week. He is hitting .200 with three home runs and 14 RBIs in 130 at bats this season, far below last season's numbers.

BALTIMORE -- Gleyber Torres simply owns the Baltimore Orioles.

But the New York Yankees' 22-year-old shortstop is trying hard to avoid believing that.

"I know a lot of things about how I hit very well in this series in Baltimore," Torres said late Wednesday. "But I don't think about that too much. I try to respect, first of all, respect the game, be humble, respect the team and just play."

Still, humble or not, what Torres' bat has been doing to the Orioles this young season has been downright disrespectful.

Sure, a lot of hitters around the majors are having their way with the lowly O's these days, as evidenced by the 105 home runs their pitchers have allowed through 49 games this season.

But nobody has put together the kind of nightly power-hitting display against Baltimore that Torres has.

In 11 games against the Orioles this season, Torres has 10 of his 12 homers, with his latest coming in the third and fifth innings of Wednesday night's 7-5 Yankees victory at Camden Yards. Both blasts gave the Yankees needed breathing room as the Orioles hunted a comeback.

"He's getting himself into a really strong hitting position a lot, and getting his A-swing off a lot, and the power's pretty special," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said.

The first of the two home runs came on a 1-2 slider that stayed in the middle of the strike zone. Lined toward the bullpens beyond the center-field fence, the ball landed an estimated 424 feet away, near the pitching rubber in the Orioles pen.

That one came on an 82.9 mph toss from Orioles starter Dan Straily. It was the third time a Straily slider had been hit for a homer in the game. DJ LeMahieu and Thairo Estrada had both homered off sliders in the second inning.

Straily has allowed a major league-leading seven homers off of sliders.

Orioles manager Brandon Hyde believed Straily practically served the homer up to Torres on a platter, given its poor location.

"There's definitely a pitching plan [against Torres]; it's definitely not to throw the ball in the middle of the plate -- and we just continue to do it," Hyde said. "When you don't do it, we get him out.

"Gleyber's got two homers besides facing the Orioles. Hitting like .220 or something. So people, major league pitchers, are pitching to him."

Torres actually is hitting .250 against all other teams. Versus the Orioles, he is batting .465, with a whopping 1.763 OPS.

Torres' second homer came off a fastball. As reliever Gabriel Ynoa tried to paint the outside corner with the 93 mph pitch, the right-handed-hitting Torres went with it, lining the ball over the high scoreboard in right, toward the adjacent warehouse and Eutaw Street.

"Gleyber's a good player," Hyde said. "He had a really nice piece of hitting, knocking the ball the other way; you tip your hat on something like that. But the other stuff, that's inexcusable at this level."

Wednesday's outing marked the fourth multihomer game of Torres' season. All four have come against the Orioles, with three at Camden Yards. Overall, he has six career multihomer games, with five of them having come against Baltimore.

Torres hit two homers in Monday's win at Baltimore and two in the first game of a doubleheader against the O's last week at Yankee Stadium. He had another homer in the other game of the doubleheader. So, in his past five games against Baltimore, he has seven home runs.

"Any time you have that kind of short stretch with that much success against someone, yeah, you just kind of shake your head at it a little bit," Boone said. "It's one of those things that's unusual and rare, and he's very locked in."

Torres has a very good chance to break the single-season record for homers hit by a player against the Orioles franchise. His 10 long balls versus the team are only two shy of the mark shared by three players: Lou Gehrig (1931), Hank Greenberg (1946), and Gus Zernial (1951). At the time each of those players hit 12 homers against the organization, the Orioles were known as the St. Louis Browns.

With eight games left between the Yankees and Orioles this season, Torres has plenty of time to surpass the mark.

Along with Torres, Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez has had his share of success against Baltimore. A fourth-inning homer on Wednesday gave Sanchez nine against the Orioles this season.

According to Elias Sports Bureau research, Torres and Sanchez are the first teammates on any squad to have at least nine home runs apiece against the Orioles franchise in the same season.

CHICAGO -- He's been in right field this week, but for the Philadelphia Phillies, not the Chicago Cubs. Bryce Harper might have been at the top of the offseason wish list for more than a few fans last winter, but not many are clamoring for him in Chicago right now. That's because the Cubs' offense -- once thought broken -- continues to put up big numbers in a resurgent season at the plate. At least so far.

Wednesday was one of the few good hitting nights at Wrigley Field this season, as the ballpark has played favorably for pitchers. But the temperature -- and the winds -- made a dramatic change overnight, and the Cubs took advantage. Three long home runs, including Albert Almora Jr.'s first career grand slam, helped the home team coast to a big victory after trading a pair of one-run wins in the first two games of four between these division-leading teams.

"He had gotten me earlier in the game with the bases loaded and two outs," Almora said of Phillies starter Cole Irvin. "I didn't want to leave six men out there."

Almora's first-pitch slam in the fifth inning broke a 3-3 tie and the Cubs never looked back, eventually beating the Phillies 8-4. While collecting eight hits and four walks, the Cubs maintained a hefty lead in the National League in an all-important offensive category: on-base percentage. They lead the Dodgers and Cardinals by six points after Wednesday. No other major statistic correlates to runs scoring better than getting on base. For whatever reason, the Cubs forgot how to do that in the second half of last season, but they got it back.

Their thump is back, too. The Cubs finished 11th in the National League in home runs in 2018 but rank third so far this year while playing fewer games than the two teams ahead of them as well as almost every team behind them. And they're doing it in a more pitcher-friendly Wrigley Field. Perhaps the return of their power coincides with a change in hitting coach they made after last season, but it's more likely tied to the maturation of a lineup built around their young veteran hitters.

Almora is a key example. He hit his fifth home run Wednesday after hitting five all of last year. And there's a reason Chicago manager Joe Maddon is batting him lower in the lineup, behind OBP stalwarts such as Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant and Willson Contreras: Almora doesn't strike out much.

"By putting him down there I have a strong belief the ball is going to be moved with people on base," Maddon said.

There's that on-base thing again. The Cubs love to clog up the basepaths and, yes, sometimes they strand too many, but over time, those clogged bases will turn into big run totals.

Irvin got to Almora twice Wednesday, but the third time was the charm for the Cubs outfielder. His grand slam was preceded by a game-tying, third-inning blast from Rizzo, a bomb that hit the Budweiser sign beyond the right-field fence.

"Literally almost knocked out the sign," Maddon said. "He got the D [in Budweiser]. That ball was crushed."

So was Javier Baez's seventh-inning blast. The big hits and runs just kept coming.

So who needs Harper when the offense looks like this? Of course, Maddon didn't buy that narrative quite so easily. He didn't say it outright, but who wouldn't want another premier hitter? After all, last year the Cubs tanked in the second half. The more insulation they have from that happening again, the better.

"It's always good to have depth," Maddon said. "I can't discount that. It's nice to see our guys come through like this, but it's still a long ways to go."

No truer words have been said, considering the collapse of last season. But for now -- and that's all we can go off of -- the Cubs have rediscovered their ability to get on base combined with flexing some muscle. Wednesday was a great example, and led to a tip of the cap by Almora.

"The curtain call went by so quick," he said. "I wish I could have enjoyed it more."

If that's the worst the Cubs have to worry about on offense, they'll be in good shape.