The pitching-rich Cubbies are the team to beat in the NL Central.

CHICAGO (AP) – One day early in spring training last year, Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker watched in disbelief as his new team turned what was supposed to be a routine third-to-first throw into a laugher straight out of Little League.

First the ball sailed into right field. Then it somehow wound up in left field. When someone tried to throw it home, the ball flew over the catcher’s head.

“My wife said, “Man, you guys are like the Bad News Bears,”‘ Baker recalled, shaking his head. “I said, “We’ll tighten it up.”‘

They did more than that. In one season, the Cubs went from being a franchise that had made losing an art form for the better part of a century to within five outs of the World Series.

OK, so they lost in typical Cubs fashion. But they begin this season as favorites to win their division – the first time in decades – with a lineup full of talent, a bench that can pick up any slack and a rotation so fearsome opposing batters are already whiffing.

Winning isn’t even enough now. The Cubs are talking playoffs and pennants, and anything less will be a disappointment.

“There’s a different attitude coming in when you know that you’re up there and people are gunning for you and you’re not trying to catch up to the rest of the pack,” closer Joe Borowski said.

“It makes it a lot more fun when you know you’re going to be winning instead of coming in and who knows what to expect.”

The Cubs haven’t had back-to-back winning seasons since 1972, but that streak should end this year. Chicago has more firepower than most opponents can match, with a lineup that includes Sammy Sosa, Moises Alou, Corey Patterson and newcomer Derrek Lee.

And pitching? Oh, my. The Cubs already had the best young rotation in the majors with Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Matt Clement and Carlos Zambrano. Then they added four-time NL Cy Young winner Greg Maddux on the first day of spring training, giving Chicago a super staff on par with some of those Atlanta powerhouses Maddux was part of in the mid-1990s.

Just look at the numbers. Each of the Cubs’ starters won at least 13 games last year and pitched more than 200 innings. Wood led the majors with 266 strikeouts while Prior was right behind with 245. Prior also tied for second in the NL in wins (18), was third in ERA (2.43) and finished third in voting for the Cy Young.

Zambrano ranked in the top 10 in the NL in ERA (3.11) and innings pitched (214) in his first full season in the majors. Clement went 12-6 with a 3.72 ERA in his final 22 starts.

And Maddux? All he did was win at least 15 games for the 16th straight year.

“What makes it so good is it’s so deep,” Maddux said. “It’s not just one or two guys and three OK guys. It’s five solid pitchers. When you can go that deep, you have a chance to win every day.

“I’ve been lucky enough to play on a few teams that have had that,” Maddux added. “Every night you had a chance to win. Every night you hear the everyday players liking their chances to win. It’s very rare that teams will have that, and I think this team has a chance to do that.”

Prior is expected to miss at least his first start of the season because of an inflamed right Achilles’ tendon; he didn’t pitch in any spring training games.

So how, exactly, did the Cubs go from losers to bruisers? This, after all, was a team that was 67-95 in 2002, so bad it got not one, but two managers fired.

It all began with Baker, who came to Chicago after a run in San Francisco that included an NL pennant, six straight winning seasons and three manager of the year titles. Baker insists he’s no magic man, but he has a way of getting the most out of players.

When the Cubs arrived in spring training last year, Baker told his players he didn’t care about Chicago’s past. That nonsense about goats and curses? Simply that, nonsense.

The Cubs could win, Baker said. But they had to believe it to do it.

“Winning takes care of a lot of things,” he said. “But it starts with an attitude before you win.”

Added Borowski, “As spring went along and everybody saw how he carried himself, it just started to transcend onto everybody else. And everybody else started to believe.”

The Cubs went 19-8 last September to clinch their first division title since 1989. Then they beat Atlanta for their first playoff series victory in 95 years. They were poised for more history when they took a 3-1 lead over the Florida Marlins in the NL championship series. Fans crammed the streets outside Wrigley Field, and there was a buzz in Chicago not heard since Michael Jordan’s heyday.

Five outs from earning their first trip to the World Series since 1945, the Cubs collapsed. Up 3-0 in Game 6, they came unglued when that now infamous fan unwittingly deflected a foul ball away from Alou. Florida rallied to win that game 8-3, and then Game 7.

As devastating as the loss was, some Chicago fans seemed to expect it – the Cubs had been breaking hearts for years.

“When we lost the playoffs last year, this guy came up to me and said his grandmother told him we were going to lose. Grandma got it from somewhere,” Baker said. You have to win “again and again and again and again until you filter out generations of disappointment and despair. It’s impossible to do it overnight when it’s taken however many years it’s taken to get here.”

But Baker and general manager Jim Hendry are doing everything they can to speed the process. Instead of keeping last year’s playoff team intact, Hendry spent the offseason making upgrades.

He acquired Lee, who has power numbers to go with his Gold Glove at first base. He shored up the bullpen by signing LaTroy Hawkins, the top reliever in the AL the past two seasons. He bolstered the bench with Todd Walker and Todd Hollandsworth, both of whom could have had starting jobs elsewhere.

And in the biggest coup of all, Hendry got Maddux to come back to his original team.

“When I got here, we obviously weren’t winning a whole lot of games. We weren’t getting the opportunity to get players,” Wood said. “Now we’ve moved in that direction. Every opportunity we’ve had to make this team better, they’ve gone out and done it.

“We’re on our way up,” he added. “And we’re going to be there for a while.”