The Chicago Cubs’ window of contention has been built around a core that can remain intact for the next three years.

If properly supplemented by their top prospects coming through the system, in addition to whichever impact talent the front office brings in this offseason through free agency or trades, the Cubs have an opportunity to reestablish dominance in the National League Central Division.

The Cubs need to add more power in the middle of their lineup and continue to bolster their pitching staff. A path exists on both fronts, and the market should start to see more movement following Friday’s news of Shohei Ohtani’s record deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers that reportedly defers $680 million of the $700 million contract to be paid out from 2034-43.

However, the timing of the Cubs’ expected rise coincides with the division as a whole getting stronger. While the Milwaukee Brewers were the only team to make the postseason in 2023 behind a 92-win division title, the Cubs and Cincinnati Reds were in the postseason hunt until the final weekend. The Pittsburgh Pirates were 11 games over .500 entering May and finished with 14 more wins than in 2022. St. Louis is coming off its worst season in 33 years, though it followed four consecutive playoff appearances and two division titles.

“The division’s getting better,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said last week at the MLB winter meetings. “I think the most important part: there’s a ton of young talent in the division. I think that’s a really cool thing for baseball. I think everybody in the division is taking steps forward.

“The young players have now accumulated at-bats, they have accumulated innings. There’s nothing that can replicate major-league at-bats, major-league innings, so the division just continues to get stronger. What you’re going to see is a lot of young players, ages 27 down, that are going to start to make significant improvements.”

Six fewer games against each division team, because of the balanced schedule MLB implemented in 2023, creates a little more urgency to play well versus NL Central teams, especially if the division is as competitive in 2024 as some believe.

“I’ve been in this division for a long, long time, well before I was managing here. It almost feels like no matter where a team is in the standings, you have to play your absolute best,” said Reds manager David Bell, who played four seasons with St. Louis and one with Milwaukee. “So that hasn’t changed, it’s only gotten stronger.

“I think going into this season it easily could be said that any of the five teams could have a great year and win the division. Somebody’s going to, but really, like, all five have a shot at it.”

The youth infusion within the NL Central goes beyond the talent that has reached the majors in the last year. MLB.com’s midseason farm system rankings had the Pirates, Brewers, Cubs and Reds in the Nos. 2-5 spots with each team featuring at least five players in their top-100 prospect rankings. Of course, that doesn’t guarantee future big-league success, and the mark of an annually competitive team relies on successfully integrating prospects into the majors while continuing their development.

Brewers manager Pat Murphy and Bell credited the job their organizations have done in helping prepare players for that jump to the big leagues.

“For those young people breaking in to try to help them understand the standards, help them understand you’re good enough, that’s why you’re here, but now here are the standards — it’s not enough to just want to be here, how do we sustain it and even grow,” Murphy said last week. “That’s where the staff comes in and helps out with that transition to helping them understand and be aware enough, these are your responsibilities, these are the standards, and I’m excited about that part of it. But we got a lot of young energy.”

The Reds had 16 players make their MLB debut in 2023, including five of their top prospects, most notably Elly De La Cruz, Matt McLain and Christian Encarnacion-Strand. As the season progressed, it led to tough playing-time decisions for Bell.

“They did not seem like first-year players. I’ve never seen anything like it. They were very prepared,” Bell said last week. “A lot of it does speak to their character, for sure, and we’ve done a good job of identifying high-character people that we acquire and draft. But development is where our heart is, I would say. We love to be able to be there and help our players become the best they can be.”

Cubs manager Craig Counsell will be tasked with finding a way to integrate players like Alexander Canario, Pete Crow-Armstrong and any other prospects called up in-season. It can present a challenge with so many positions blocked by established players on the roster. Development doesn’t stop when a player reaches the majors. Counsell said he wants to support those players who make the transition and help them not feel like they have the weight of the world every day they come to the ballpark.

Regardless of who the Cubs acquire this offseason, Counsell will be charged with capitalizing on the organization’s talent as prospects earn call-ups.

“The norm is a massive struggle — that’s the norm — and I think if you come at it from that place, the problem is that expectations for those players are on the other side of the spectrum and that’s a hard thing for everybody to balance,” Counsell said at his introductory news conference last month.

“It’s a hard thing for the manager trying to win a game to balance, it’s a hard thing for the fans to balance, it’s a hard thing for all the player development staff. Then most of all, it’s hard for the player, so trying to create some empathy and some understanding with that for the players and just for the group is probably the most important thing to do.”

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By NAJIB JOBAIN, WAFAA SHURAFA and SAMY MAGDY (Associated Press)

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces carried out strikes across Gaza overnight and into Tuesday as they pressed ahead with an offensive that officials say could go on for weeks or months, even as global calls for a cease-fire left both Israel and its main ally, the United States, increasingly isolated.

The war ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel has already brought unprecedented death and destruction to the impoverished coastal enclave, with much of northern Gaza obliterated, more than 18,000 Palestinians killed, and over 80% of the population of 2.3 million pushed from their homes. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

The health care system and humanitarian aid operations have collapsed in large parts of the besieged enclave, and aid workers have warned of starvation and the spread of disease among displaced people in overcrowded shelters and tent camps.

STRIKES AND RAIDS ACROSS GAZA

Strikes overnight and into Tuesday in southern Gaza — in an area where civilians have been told to seek shelter — killed at least 23 people, including seven children and six women, according to hospital records and an Associated Press reporter who saw the bodies arrive at a hospital.

Islam Harb’s three children were among those killed overnight when Israeli airstrikes flattened four residential buildings in the the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border. The family was sharing their home with nine displaced people, he said.

“My twin girls, Maria and Joud, were martyred, and my little son, Ammar, also martyred,” he said.

In central Gaza, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah received the bodies of 33 people killed in strikes overnight, including 16 women and four children, according to hospital records. Many were killed in strikes that hit residential buildings in the built-up Maghazi refugee camp.

In northern Gaza, Israeli forces stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital, ordering all men, including medics, into the courtyard, said Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The U.N. humanitarian office said the hospital has 65 patients, including 12 children in intensive care and six newborns in incubators. Some 3,000 displaced people are sheltering there, it said, all awaiting evacuation because of severe shortages of food, water and electricity.

The military says it is rounding up men in northern Gaza as it searches for Hamas fighters. Photos and videos circulating online show groups of detainees stripped to their underwear, bound and blindfolded, and some who have been released say they were beaten and denied food and water.

At another hospital in northern Gaza, the aid group Doctors Without Borders said a surgeon was wounded Monday by a shot fired from outside the facility, which it says has been under “total siege” by Israeli forces for a week.

There was no immediate comment from the military on either incident in the north.

CALLS FOR A CEASE-FIRE

Israel launched the campaign after Hamas broke through its defenses and terrorists streamed into the south on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and seizing about 240 others, of which about half remain in captivity. At least 105 Israeli soldiers have died in the Gaza ground offensive, the army says.

Israel’s blockade of the territory — and intense airstrikes and ground fighting that have made aid nearly impossible to distribute — have led to severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods. The offensive has resulted in the deaths of over 18,000 Palestinians, according to health officials. They do not give a breakdown of civilians and combatants but say roughly two-thirds of the dead are women and minors.

Israel blames civilian casualties on Hamas, saying it positions fighters, tunnels and rocket launchers in dense urban areas, using civilians as human shields.

The U.N. secretary-general and Arab states have rallied much of the international community behind calls for an immediate cease-fire. But the U.S. vetoed those efforts at the U.N. Security Council last week as it rushed tank munitions to Israel to allow it to maintain the offensive.

A nonbinding vote on a similar resolution at the General Assembly scheduled for Tuesday would be largely symbolic.

Israel and the U.S. argue that any cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power, even over a small part of the devastated territory, would mean victory for the terrorist group, which has governed Gaza since 2007 and has pledged to destroy Israel.

CRUSHING HAMAS SEEN AS ‘TALL ORDER’

In a briefing with the AP on Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant signaled that the current phase of heavy ground fighting and airstrikes could stretch on for weeks and that further military activity could continue for months.

But many experts consider Israel’s aims to be unrealistic, pointing to Hamas’ deep base of support among many Palestinians in Gaza, as well as the occupied West Bank, who see it as resisting Israel’s half-century of military rule.

Even just destroying Hamas’ military capability “will be a tall order without decimating what remains of Gaza,” said the International Crisis Group, a think tank, in a report over the weekend that also called for an immediate cease-fire.

Israeli officials have said some 7,000 Hamas members — roughly one-quarter of the group’s estimated fighting force — have been killed and that 500 fighters have been detained in Gaza over the past month. Hamas, which fired a barrage of rockets Monday that wounded one person in a Tel Aviv suburb, says it still has thousands of reserve fighters. None of the claims could be verified.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah, meanwhile, has repeatedly traded fire with Israel, and other Iran-backed groups across the region have attacked U.S. targets, threatening to widen the conflict. Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have targeted Israeli shipping, attacked a tanker in the Red Sea with no clear ties to the country overnight.

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Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writer Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem contributed.

Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Fresh off a convincing 28-13 upset of the first-place Detroit Lions, the Chicago Bears are suddenly pursuing something that seemed unattainable 10 weeks ago. December relevance.

No, the Bears haven’t nudged their way into the “in the hunt” column of all the playoff graphics yet. They are still 5-8, in last place in the NFC North and behind 11 other teams in the conference as the regular season enters the home stretch.

But who knows? A third consecutive victory next weekend in Cleveland could reawaken the wildest of playoff fantasies for the Bears and their fans. Sunday’s victory wasn’t just encouraging. It was thoroughly convincing. The Bears outscored the Lions 18-0 after halftime, made the big plays when they needed them most and then sealed the deal in the late stages of the fourth quarter.

The quest to build on this newfound momentum and confidence will continue in Week 15. To set the stage, Tribune writers Colleen Kane and Dan Wiederer survey the scene at Halas Hall and address four key topics in “true or false” format.

True or false? It’s OK for Bears players to be talking about a possible playoff push.

Kane: True. I mean, I don’t really think I can govern what the players should be talking about when it comes to goals, especially given all the losses they’ve endured over the last two years. If their surge of three wins in four games gives them motivation to see if they can make the playoffs, if it convinces them they have something to play for over the final four games, why not?

But honestly, I didn’t get the feeling after the game that many players were thinking too grandly about a two-game winning streak. They know there’s a long way to go for this team. I liked center Lucas Patrick’s answer about it Monday, saying he thinks the players’ focus is solely on the 8-5 Cleveland Browns, who just beat the Jacksonville Jaguars behind apparently-not-yet-retired quarterback Joe Flacco.

“The awesome part about the NFL is it doesn’t allow you to do that,” Patrick said. “This is a really good defense we’re about to go up against. Their offense just became pretty explosive with the quarterback addition they had. We’ve got to go into a different environment and play and win a game, so we’re completely locked in right now on this week. Because as soon as you start talking about Week 16, 17, what that might look like, what divisional round, wild card, is when you start metaphorically putting the cart in front of the horse, and that’s when you really don’t pull in the same direction.”

Wiederer: I’ll see your Lucas Patrick insight and raise you with wisdom from Cole Kmet, who also struck the proper balance between optimism and grounded focus after Sunday’s win. While Kmet acknowledged the Bears’ upset of Detroit felt like the biggest win of the past two seasons, he also wasn’t looking to distribute party poppers around Halas Hall.

“If you’re just being real about it, it means nothing if you don’t continue on with this (momentum),” Kmet said. “This is one down and there’s four more of these to go. We are (already) in playoff mode in a sense. And this doesn’t mean anything if we lose out or anything. It just doesn’t. So you take this for what it is. And now we have to move on to next week.”

Kmet again emphasized that the Bears’ push to close the regular season with a six-game winning streak was need-based, the only way they could realistically reach the postseason and give this surge of progress maximum meaning.

“We have been looking better,” Kmet said. “And I do believe in that. You see that on tape. But the results have to come with that. This is a results-based league.”

Amen.

True or false? Justin Fields’ performance against the Lions gives general manager Ryan Poles a justifiable reason to stick with him as the team’s quarterback for 2024 and beyond.

Wiederer: True. Oh. And also false. That’s right, I’m going fence-straddling here, if only to illuminate just how complex and difficult this QB decision is going to be for Poles in the coming months. Fields was, at times, brilliant Sunday, a tough-minded leader with infectious confidence and special playmaking ability. He helped propel the Bears to a convincing upset of the first-place team in their division. The 38-yard free play TD pass to DJ Moore was equal parts lucky and clutch. (More on that shortly.) And Fields made at least a half-dozen other plays Sunday where he torched the Lions with either his scrambling explosiveness or passing prowess. Most significantly, he didn’t turn the ball over and has now thrown only one interception in his past five starts.

Yet with all those positives to build on, Fields still has too many moments where it’s easy to worry about his overall pocket presence and his internal clock and his hesitance to throw into tight windows. As a passer, he was shaky on third downs Sunday and inside the red zone. He held the ball for 6.3 seconds on one 9-yard sack in the first half and for 8.1 seconds on another play where center Lucas Patrick was eventually called for holding. Fields was given a pass by the officiating crew on what should have been an intentional grounding violation one snap before the TD pass to Moore. He airmailed a wide-open Moore on a possible 30-yard gain over the middle.

Poles must continually ask himself whether Fields can become the engine of multiple championship runs and not just be a solid starter the Bears can win with. Sunday’s performance offered a lot to dissect and ended with a meaningful victory. But through a big-picture lens, it may not have altered the evaluation significantly.

Kane: And it all becomes more complex when you consider the Carolina Panthers lost again Sunday to drop to 1-12, and the New England Patriots won in Week 14 to improve to 3-10. With four games to go, the Panthers look like they’re stumbling toward the No. 1 draft pick, which would go to the Bears thanks to Poles’ trade of the 2023 top pick.

I do believe Fields has made strides this season. That stat you throw out of one interception in the last five starts is huge, though there were three fumbles in that stretch too. He has come through in the clutch, as has been on the checklist. He has had moments where his pocket presence is better, as well as keeping his eyes downfield to pass while on the move. And he still has that jaw-dropping playmaking ability, like he showed in a first-quarter third-and-8 play from the Bears 11. It twice looked like Lions defenders were going to take Fields down near the goal line, and he escaped their grasp for a 19-yard gain.

But what if the Bears can have their pick of USC quarterback Caleb Williams or North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye? Has Poles seen enough positives from Fields to know that he is the better option over developing one of those two? Or is there enough to worry about in Fields’ game after nearly three seasons to go for the total reset on offense?

I don’t envy Poles’ decision because I honestly don’t know. But we all do know something about quarterback-choice regret in Chicago.

True or false? Montez Sweat is having a Khalil Mack-like effect in his introduction to the Bears defense.

Kane: False. (But also kind of true, if we’re fence-straddling here.) Sweat’s impact on the Bears defense has been undeniable. He has 3 1/2 sacks and 10 quarterback hits in five games with the Bears and combined with his stats from Washington has reached 10 sacks in a season for the first time in his career.

He was all over the Lions in the second half Sunday as he totaled five tackles, a sack, four quarterback hits and a pass defended for the game. Plus coach Matt Eberflus and Sweat’s teammates have raved about what his presence does for them as the defense has totaled 10 takeaways (plus a special teams takeaway) in the last three games.

I just don’t know if you can call it Mack-like yet. Go back and look at Mack’s first four games with the Bears. He had an interception, four forced fumbles and five sacks in the first four games of 2018. He put together an All-Pro season for a 12-4 playoff team that year — though it should be noted that team had some other monster players on it, including Akiem Hicks.

Sweat is looking like one of the more exciting things to happen to this Bears team in a while. But the bar Mack set, given his ability to make game-changing plays, was pretty high.

Wiederer: Right. Having lived the start of the Mack era, we are qualified to remind people that it was like watching 50 barrels of TNT ignite for a defense that became the best in the NFL that season on a team that won an NFC North championship. I still remember standing in the visitor’s locker room in Arizona after Mack’s strip-sack of Sam Bradford helped the Bears steal a 16-14 win over the Cardinals and hearing Prince Amukamara compare him to LeBron James. Then, not five minutes later in a different pocket of the same locker room, Danny Trevathan dropped the M.J. comparison. Especially early on in Mack’s stay here, there was a wow factor for everyone he was around.

This is not that. At least not yet. But that also should not diminish the significance of the energy and belief Sweat is supplying the Bears at a time when they need both. When the Bears traded away a second-round pick to land Sweat last month and then guaranteed him more than $62 million on a four-year, $98 million extension, I expressed my want to see Sweat make his presence felt in every quarter of every game while also providing undeniable evidence that he is elevating the defense as a whole. All of that is currently happening. It’s been fun to watch. And for Sweat, who is signed with the Bears through the 2027 season, it’s just the beginning.

True or false? The free play TD pass from Fields to Moore is the most significant play in the Bears’ season to date.

Wiederer: True. I’m all in. True. True. True. Normally, I hate exaggerated prisoner-of-the-moment reactions. But in this case, it’s an easy argument to make. That free play touchdown was the biggest momentum-shifting play in the Bears’ most meaningful victory in years. It was the kind of play the Bears have so often been on the wrong end of in close games against quality opponents. It was an example of a moment where the Bears not only took advantage of an opponent’s mistake but cashed it in in the biggest way possible. It was an adrenalizing moment on a day when the Bears looked every bit like an on-the-rise playoff contender while the Lions appeared to be a flawed and mistake-prone also-ran.

That play helped the Bears win their second consecutive game overall and their second consecutive inside the NFC North. It gave life inside the locker room to the dream that the team can emerge late in the year as a surprise wild-card contender. It was the play inside a game full of big plays in a big home win that has the Bears and many of their fans feeling legitimately hopeful.

Kane: Pondering the significance of one play is what NFL reporters who cover one game a week do! What about DJ Moore’s 56-yard touchdown catch against the Washington Commanders to help close out the Bears’ first win of the season and a 14-game losing streak? What about the 36-yard Fields-Moore connection that set up Cairo Santos’ winning field goal against the Vikings for the Bears’ first NFC North win under Matt Eberflus? Thousands of words have been typed collectively by the Bears beat on those passes.

I also think the Bears defensive players who have 11 takeaways in three games and have largely fueled the recent resurgence might argue for some of their plays. They just have too many to choose from.

But given the stakes of this one, the Bears were trying to beat the NFC North leaders for their first two-game winning streak under Eberflus. And given the ongoing quarterback conversation in Chicago. And given that the Bears so often have been the team on the mistake-making end of such plays — I’ll agree. Big moment for a Bears team that needed more of them.

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