The Cubs came home after a 9-game road trip with positive vibes, momentum and one eye on October.

6 games and 7 days later, they leave with a what-could-have-been feeling and an eye on 2025.

The Cubs entered the 6-game homestand 3 games back of the Braves for the final NL Wild-Card spot and carried a 3-run lead late on Monday night that would cut it to 2.5. Instead, they finished a crucial homestand 2-4 and now sit 5 games behind the Braves and Mets (who both hold the tiebreaker over the Cubs.

With only 19 games remaining, the prospects of playing in October are extremely slim (less than 1%), so the Cubs will now look to finish strong and carry their momentum into 2025.

In many ways, the 6-game homestand was a microcosm of the 2024 Cubs season.

A lot of hope and a brilliant rotation — including a no-hitter Wednesday night — that was hampered by a bullpen blowup and an incredibly inconsistent offense. The latter being the area that has plagued the Cubs the most this season.

In those 6 games, the Cubs outscored the Pirates and Yankees 17-16, a number that should equate to a 4-2 or 3-3 homestand. But 71% of those runs came in Wednesday’s 12-0 blowout of the Pirates and even Sunday’s win saw the Cubs score just 2 runs on 3 hits against Gerrit Cole and the Yankees.

The Cubs were shut out 3 times on the homestand.

It’s the story of the Cubs’ offense in 2024.

They had winning records in March/April (18-12), July (13-12) and August (18-8) and scored over 100 runs in all those months. In May and June, they mustered 99 runs in each month and were 21-34 combined.

“I think it’s a complicated season to figure out from an offensive standpoint,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said. “I think we’ve had these ups and downs during the course of the year, and there’s been big ups and big downs, which has been difficult to reconcile intellectually.”

So, as they head into 2025, what is the Cubs offense? Is it the 2023 version that scored the 6th most runs in baseball? Or is the 2024 version that could blow out a team one day but be shutout the day before and the two days after?

“I think we got to a place, because we struggled for such a long period of time, that you kind of wondered, ‘Was last year something we can’t repeat?’ type of thing,” Hoyer said. “And then obviously [we were] kind of [having a hot stretch] again. So, it does make it that much more difficult to reconcile. We’ll have to figure that out.”

For now, Hoyer and his front office aren’t focusing all their attention on it. There are still 19 games that will give them a full data point to reflect on. But it’s the No. 1 question they will be asking themselves from the end of the season until the World Series concludes and the offseason begins.

Once that happens, they need to have their answers — and some of those solutions might just be internally.

Some members of the Cubs offense have played to their career norms. Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki are posting numbers at or even above their career averages.

The biggest difference this year was the lack of star power.

In 2023, that was provided in large part by Cody Bellinger. He provided a 4.4 fWAR, a .307/.356/.525 slash line (.881 OPS) and 136 weighted runs-created plus with 26 home runs and 97 RBI.

“We don’t have any one player having the type of season that Cody had for us last year,” Hoyer said. “It felt like, at times, he was just kind of carrying our offense. Every big hit, he was in the middle of everything.”

This season Bellinger has been good — but not the game-changing bat he was last year. Part of that is injuries — he missed time with a fractured rib and a fractured finger — but this season he has a .748 OPS, 108 wRC+, 15 home runs and 60 RBI.

If he doesn’t opt out of his contract, regaining his past form in 2025 could be the difference. Or maybe Isaac Paredes — who was that level of player in 2023 for Tampa Bay, could do it.

Either way, the Cubs need only look across the way this weekend to see what a superstar bat can do for an offense. Juan Soto and Aaron Judge were in the middle of seemingly every rally for the Yankees and they scored half of their runs this weekend.

Having that type of bat emerge — whether internally or externally — will be crucial in 2025.

“I think this year we have a lot of balance, and we have a lot of players having solid years now that they’ve come out of their May and June swoon,” Hoyer said. “But I think that we don’t have anyone doing that. And I think that, I think that is the difference between this year and last year.”