If the Chicago Cubs want to be a team of destiny, they better come up with a miracle.If they don't, a season that's seen them win 103 games on their way to their first World Series since 1945 could be over as soon as Sunday. The Cleveland Indians lead the series three games to one.If the lead feels even bigger than that, it may be because the latest entry in this Fall Classic was a thumping that only Cleveland fans had an easy time looking at.After winning a 1-0 squeaker in Game 4 on Friday, Cleveland took Game 5 on Saturday by a 7-2 final. The Cubs could once again do nothing against Corey Kluber, who only regressed to six one-run innings from his six shutout innings in Game 1. John Lackey and a host of Cubs relievers served up 10 hits. Carlos Santana and Jason Kipnis sent two of those into the Wrigley Field bleachers.And so, it's down to this for the Cubs: One more loss, and their trip to the World Series will have proven powerless to stop their championship drought from turning 109 years old.Oh, there are silver linings, of course.There are the pitching matchups, for one. Jon Lester will get the ball against Trevor Bauer on three days' rest in Game 5. That's a mismatch if there ever was one."To have a guy that's been-there, done-that kind of a guy, and been very successful, been a World Series champion, he knows what the feeling is like, he knows what it takes," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said, via Jamal Collier of MLB.com. "It's definitely comforting to the rest of the group for [Sunday]."If there's a Game 6, there will be another mismatch in Jake Arrieta against Josh Tomlin on short rest. If there's a Game 7, major league ERA leader Kyle Hendricks will go against Kluber in his second straight start on short rest.On the other side of the ball, the Cubs' vaunted offense showed more life in Game 4 than the box score suggests.It was Dexter Fowler who finally got the Cubs' first home run of the series with his solo dinger off the previously untouchable Andrew Miller on Saturday, but that could have been the team's third home run of the night under better conditions. Ben Zobrist and Anthony Rizzo crushed balls that got knocked down by the wind.And if there is indeed a Game 6, the Cubs know Kyle Schwarber will be back in the lineup when the designated hitter is re-introduced into the series back at Progressive Field. He was Chicago's best hitter in the first two games of the series.There are, however, two things standing in the way of the miracle the Cubs need: history and a team that is simply playing better baseball.The easy reference to make in support of the Cubs is to the last time a team from Cleveland was involved in a championship series with a 3-1 deficit. Just go check Twitter. I'll wait.Easy jokes aside, though, 3-1 deficits are no joke in the World Series. There have been 46 teams that have fallen behind 3-1. Only six of them have come back to win.As Mike Puma of theNew York Post notes, the last of those comebacks was three decades ago:For the Cubs to break the streak, they need to figure out an Indians team that already has them figured out.It's not just the wind that's keeping the Cubs from living up to their reputation as one of baseball's best power-hitting teams. Cleveland pitchers clearly know that hitters have a hard time hitting breaking balls over the fence. Per Baseball Savant, they've gone from 23.9 percent breaking balls in the regular season to 36.6 percent in the postseason. Cubs hitters have had no answer for that.In what seems to be an offshoot of their struggles to hit the ball over the fence, Cubs hitters have also lost their trademark discipline. Baseball Savant's figures had them swinging outside the zone only 18.9 percent of the time in the regular season. That number was up to 21.0 percent in the World Series before Game 4. According to what the eye test saw during Game 4, it's due to rise even more.Cue Maddon saying this in his postgame press conference, via MLB.com: "We just need that offensive epiphany somehow to get us pushing in the right direction."As Cubs hitters struggle to be themselves, Indians hitters have largely been doing just fine.They have a .248 team average to Chicago's .204 and are out-homering the Cubs four to one. They're taking more disciplined at-bats and benefiting from that with better contact, holding the average exit velocity advantage at 88.6 mph to 87.0 mph.It helps that manager Terry Francona is pushing all the right buttons. Pinch-hitting Coco Crisp in Game 3 resulted in a game-winning RBI single. Santana rewarded Francona for starting him over Mike Napoli in Game 4 by going yard.Meanwhile, Francona's button-pushing is another thing making life difficult for Cubs hitters.Whereas Maddon has leaned heavily on relievers not named Pedro Strop, Hector Rondon or Aroldis Chapman, Francona continues to ride Miller and Cody Allen as much as he can. When he hasn't used them, he's pushed the right buttons anyway. Take out Fowler's dinger off Miller, and Zach McAllister is the only Cleveland reliever to allow an earned run in this series."I think our guys have done terrific," said Francona after Game 4, via MLB.com. "But I think the people that are surprised don't know our pitchers very well."All this is the long way of telling a shorter story. What the Indians are doing to the Cubs is basically the same thing they did to the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays en route to the World Series. That led to seven wins in eight games. Lo and behold, more of the same has them one win away from snapping a World Series drought that's only 40 years younger than Chicago's.According to FiveThirtyEight, the odds of the Cubs reversing Cleveland's stranglehold over this postseason stand at just 15 percent. That number is one of two things.One: The start of a storybook comeback 108 years in the makingone that will be defined by the Cubs taking advantage of favorable pitching matchups and finally finding their offense.Or two, just another step down toward zero.Anticlimactic' Maybe. But if it's a team of destiny you want to see, right now you're better off looking at the one from Cleveland that's actually playing the part.Stats courtesy ofBaseball-Reference.comandFanGraphsunless otherwise noted/linked.
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