Things have not been too peachy on the North Side of Chicago during the early goings of the 2019 MLB season.

While the reigning National League Central champion Milwaukee Brewers have jumped out to an 8-2 start, the Chicago Cubs dropped to 2-7 after losing two of three in Milwaukee this weekend.

After an offseason in which the front office was ridiculed for hardly making any additions to the ball club and off-field drama seemed to dominate the headlines, Cubs fans were just ready for the regular season to begin.

But the poor start has only amplified the frustration felt by the fan base, as the Cubs have blown multiple late leads and the pitching staff has been one of the worst in the big leagues. In fact, the last time Chicago got off to such a slow start, the year was 2012 and the team was in the first year of a rebuild that would ultimately yield a World Series title.

Although there is a tendency to panic when an expected contender is struggling–see also, the Boston Red Sox–there is still plenty of reason for Cubs fans to be optimistic. They need not look much further than 2017, when the team actually had a losing record before the All-Star break and ended up winning the division after rampaging through the second half.

April has only just begun, and there is a lot of baseball left. Here are five reasons that the Chicago Cubs will be just fine:

5. The old guys are still dealing

One of the reasons that the PECOTA projections only had the Cubs winning 79 games this year was the average age (32) of their starting rotation.

Jon Lester's peripherals have suggested he has been fairly lucky the past couple of seasons, and while Cole Hamels was superb during his first stint with the Cubs during the second half of 2018, he struggled immensely in Texas and is a relative unknown over the course of a full season.

And yet, the two oldest veterans have been the best pitchers on the team thus far. Lester has tossed a pair of quality starts, while Hamels has also thrown two good games, one of which ruined only by one bad inning (more specifically, a bad mistake pitch that led to a Delino DeShields grand slam).

The Cubs were already counting on Lester and Hamels to be the anchors of this rotation, but it is nonetheless refreshing to see that they can go out and string together good performances early.

Especially given that guys like Kyle Hendricks and Jose Quintana typically take a little while to get rolling and Yu Darvish is still working out the kinks after a second elbow procedure, the steadiness provided by both Lester and Hamels is extremely encouraging.

4. Getting hot at Wrigley

Road trips are tough enough. But playing all of your first nine games on the road is an incredibly demanding task for any club.

And, traditionally, the Cubs are much better playing in front of the home crowd at Wrigley Field. Chicago was 51-31 at home last season, and have a winning percentage of over 64 percent in the last three seasons at home.

The Cubs also played a pair of teams–the Braves and Brewers–that made the playoffs last year in two of their first three series.' They now get six straight games at Wrigley against the Pittsburgh Pirates and Los Angeles Angels, with a great chance to get some momentum before traveling to Miami for a series with the lowly Marlins.

While the Cubs might return home to some boos–such is the nature of a fan base that can sometimes be overly passionate (just check out Cubs Twitter)–Chicago can gain a whole bunch of momentum and get closer to the .500 mark, as a start.

3. Defensive weirdness

The Cubs have been one of the best defensive teams in baseball in the last three seasons, though it would certainly be hard to discern that from their play to open 2019.

Chicago has already committed 12 errors this season, which is the second-worst mark in the bigs (the .959 fielding percentage is also second-worst). But some of the mishaps in the field have been downright absurd.

In consecutive games, Jason Heyward misplayed balls in center field. And in a span of three games, the Cubs committed three errors via catchers interference.

Javier Baez had a pair of throwing errors in the same game that Anthony Rizzo also made a throwing error. Those are two Gold Glove candidates struggling to even make routine plays. Chicago ended up making six errors in that game (against Atlanta) altogether.

And then there is the Mark Zagunis experiment. He broke big league camp with the Cubs after hitting .370 with four homers in Spring Training, and that success at the plate has translated over to the regular season, as Zagunis is hitting .385 with a .615 slugging percentage.

But Zagunis has looked downright awful in the outfield. The Cubs are trying to convert him from the catching position–much like they have done with Kyle Schwarber–but Zagunis looks very unnatural. He takes awful routes to the ball, and has made numerous mistakes on plays that should have been fairly routine.

This is all to say that such a strange trend of uncharacteristically bad defense is unlikely to continue for a team that has elite-level defensive talent in the infield and outfield.

2. Depth

Although Joe Maddon's tendency to platoon his outfielders has sometimes been a concern, the Cubs have plenty of good depth.

Zagunis, Victor Cartini, Daniel Descalso and David Bote are all off to very hot starts with the bat. Caratini's strong start, in particular, is a very welcome sign for the Cubs. Willson Contreras caught the most innings in the MLB last season, and Chicago would love to spell him some games with a more dependable Caratini behind the dish this season.

And that is not even saying anything about the tremendous utility value of Ben Zobrist, or the fact that Ian Happ will almost certainly be back with the big-league club soon to provide some power off the bench as well.

If a deep bench is going to be deemed as a “problem” again, it looks like a great problem for the Cubs to have this season.

1. Offense is on fire

Chicago's offense was the subject of immense scrutiny throughout the second half of last season and into the winter. The Cubs had the second-most games scoring one or fewer run last season behind the 47-win Baltimore Orioles. And they scored just one run in a Wild Card loss to the Colorado Rockies.

However, the bats are off to a tremendous start in 2019. Before play began on Sunday, the Cubs were leading the league in batting average and on-base percentage while ranking fourth in runs scored.

Despite another slow start from Kris Bryant, Chicago has gotten phenomenal results from Contreras, whose walk rate is above 20 percent while the strikeout rate is closer to 17 percent. Contreras is slugging .864 with three homers early, which is a massive sign of encouragement after his power stroke was zapped after the All-Star break last season.

And while he has grounded into a league-leading five double plays, Jason Heyward is hitting .333 with three homers and a .633 slugging percentage. Zobrist, meanwhile, has looked good in the leadoff spot and is hitting to the tune of a .345 clip.

If the Cubs can start getting Bryant and Rizzo going–especially with runners in scoring position–they will once again have plenty of firepower necessary to win games, even with their pitching staff still figuring things out.