Chicago Cubs

When the Cubs and Nationals squared off for the first time this season on Memorial Day, each team featured their own version of a baseball phenom.

Bryce Harper and Kris Bryant don't seem like identical players off the top of the head, but the list of similarities between the two players is quite a long one.

Both grew up in the Las Vegas area, where they played with—on the same travel team, called the Ballbusters—and against each other since they were nine and seven years old. They also each have keen memories of the other.

At nine months apart in age, Bryce Harper and Kris Bryant ran in the same Las Vegas baseball circles as kids and teens, young prodigies with beaming futures. 

Even though it isn't emphasized as much in baseball, the draft is important in building winning teams. Since it takes so long for draftees to reach the majors in most cases, it's hard to evaluate them immediately after the fact.

Now, let's take a step back and look at the Cubs' last 10 first-round draft picks. They will each receive a letter grade based on whether or not they panned out, where they are in their career and what track they're on (if they still have time to develop).

It's been 107 years since the last time the Chicago Cubs were at the summit of the baseball world, but if you look around the diamond when they're on the field, you'll see a core group with the potential to end the curse.

Over the past several seasons, Cubs fans couldn't help but focus on their farm system, if nothing else to get their minds off of the lackluster product at the major league level. Now that the Cubs are competitive, their minor league system has slipped back into the background.

However, continuing to churn out young talent in the farm system is extremely important, and the Cubs still have a number of talented young players getting ready to move to Chicago.

For a team that hasn't won a World Series in over 100 years and came into 2015 off a string of five straight losing seasons, it's remarkable just how much hype the Chicago Cubs are generating.

Thank god the NL Central is a weak division.

Despite being just a .500 ballclub through their first 30 games, the Chicago Cubs find themselves in second place in the division and 6.5 games behind the strongest team in baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Chicago Cubs have hit a rough patch over the past week or so, but they're still right around the .500 mark. That's better than they've been in the past seven years or so, and it's thanks to several improvements the team has already made in 2015.

While they still have plenty to work on if they want to be playing long into October this year, here are five things the Cubs have already managed to improve in 2015.

One month through the season, expectations are as high as ever on the North Side of Chicago. The Cubs are looking like a competitive team, and that's a breath of fresh air for baseball in the Windy City.

While it's still early, here are five takeaways from the beginning of the 2015 season for the Cubs.

All stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.

For the first time in a very long time, the Cubs were active in free agency and the trade market (from the buying end) this offseason. That meant a lot of roster turnover and a lot of questions going into this season.

Some of those questions have begun to be answered, while others remain unanswered. Whatever the case may be, here are grades through the first two-and-a-half weeks of the season for the team's seven key new additions for 2015.