Despite Kyle Tucker's silent spring, Cubs lead the league in key offensive metrics

Maybe Kyle Tucker just needs those clocks to jump forward to wake up the bat and finally notch his first hit in a Chicago Cubs uniform. The team's prized offseason acquisition entered Sunday hitless in 25 plate appearances, slashing .000/.200/.000 in his first Arizona spring training.

That's not the start Cubs fans were hoping for from the three-time All-Star, but it's almost certainly not a sign of things to come. The good news, though, is the team has continued to chug along offensively with or without him, leading the league in hits, batting average, on-base percentage, RBI, slugging percentage, OPS and runs.

Pete Crow-Armstrong has set the league ablaze with a monster Cactus League showing to this point, headlined by a two-homer game against Seattle this weekend, but he's not alone in his standout performance this spring.

Catcher Miguel Amaya, like PCA, seems to be carrying his strong second-half showing from last year into the spring, with a 1.450 OPS entering Sunday, and the bench battle between Vidal Brujan (.921 OPS) and Gage Workman (1.202 OPS) has been back-and-forth since games got underway last month.

Cubs getting spring production up and down the batting order

Michael Busch is out to prove his solid rookie season was no fluke, putting up a .440 batting average this spring, and Amaya's fellow backstop and new Cub Carson Kelly has looked good at the dish, as well. It hasn't been all rosese and sunshine, with Tucker and Seiya Suzuki both struggling a good deal, but again - as nice as it's been to see so many guys play well, with proven veterans like them, there's no real concern heading into the Tokyo Series.

The real takeaway here is we felt like the Cubs had assembled a deeper roster coming off their second consecutive 83-win season and, so far this spring, that appears to be the case. That's not to say Chicago won't face Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki in Japan and look hapless, because that could very well happen.

The point is this: there are a number of guys on this team capable of getting hot and carrying the offense for prolonged stretches of time - and with a superstar like Tucker - the hope is we can avoid the lengthy offensive slumps that doomed this team in the first half last season.