MESA, Ariz. — The Cubs have lofty goals and aren’t afraid to share them.

“We have a really good ball club, and I think we have a really good opportunity to have a lot of success this year and get to the playoffs and have a run at the World Series,” new Cubs outfielder Kyle Tucker said on the first day of full-squad workouts. “I say it every year, that’s our goal is to get to the World Series and win.”

That’s easy to say when you come from Houston, a team that has been the standard in baseball and arguably the closest thing to a dynasty in the game. They’ve been to the playoffs every year since 2017, appeared in four World Series and won two of them.

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So, is this Cubs team — coming off back-to-back 83-win seasons — really a group capable of making a deep run in October?

“[Cubs president of baseball operations] Jed [Hoyer’s] done such a tremendous job in putting together what I feel like is probably our best roster yet, just in terms of the depth, in terms of filling needs that we may have had in previous years,” shortstop Dansby Swanson said. “They’ve been really thoughtful and intentional about building this roster out to give us the best chance to succeed.”

Swanson’s voice might carry a bit more weight than Tucker’s in this case. He was on the 2021 Atlanta team that won the World Series and knows what it takes to make a postseason run. He played on the 2023 Cubs team that fell just short of the playoffs and the 2024 team that was expected to compete for the playoffs and instead finished 10 games back of the Brewers in the NL Central.

That run of “almost” seasons has led to a sense of urgency from the Cubs’ front office in the offseason. Jed Hoyer and his brass have taken bigger swings this winter — trading for Tucker and his former Houston teammate, Ryan Pressly, and adding a small army of pitchers.

“You don’t make a trade for Kyle Tucker if you don’t feel like you have a really strong team going into that year,” general manager Carter Hawkins said when camp opened on Sunday. “So, certainly, I would say, objectively, we’ve improved year over year in terms of just the talent level that’s on the field.

“And in the three-plus years I’ve been here, this is certainly the most talented team. I think Jed would say the same in terms of these last [few] years in his role.”

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But talk is cheap — as is on-paper talent. They know that.

No one might understand that better than Tucker and Pressly. You can’t half-effort it and expect talent alone to carry the day.

That fire is fueling them to get back to October for the first time since 2020 and the first time in a full season since 2018.

“I don’t see a whole lot of point in showing up just to come out and play some games and go home at the end of the day,” Tucker said. “You want to come out, show up and win. That’s kind of what our jobs are revolved around. And that’s what we like to do.

“We don’t like to just come out here and just kind of run around. We want to come out and win games and play at a high level and have a lot of fun doing it.”