CHICAGO -- What we saw here over the weekend in the Extremely Windy City were two clubs that have every reason to believe that they are once again headed toward baseball in October.

The last time the Diamondbacks and the Cubs met was in a Division Series last October and Arizona emerged with a sweep. The results were reversed this time, the Cubs gaining the sweep, in particularly heartening fashion, coming from behind in all three games. Better still for the Cubs, the quality of the opposition was indisputable. Arizona had arrived here with the best record in baseball.

"We had good clutch hitting, pitching, defense; everything clicked well this weekend," Cubs manager Lou Piniella said. "Arizona's a good baseball team. They're athletic, they've got good arms and they've been playing awfully well.

"Our team came off a tough little span of games where we struggled. A day off and then a good opponent here at home, good, lively crowds and we've been able to win three important games at home and now we've still got seven to go, so let's continue playing hard and have a good home stand."

This was good baseball on all three days. The common theme was that these two clubs, good enough to reach the postseason in 2007, are both probably even better now, particularly in the case of the Cubs.

The conditions on Sunday were not conducive to reaching for anything other than a space heater. On Mother's Day, Wrigley Field seemed as cold and damp as nearby Lake Michigan itself. On the message board in the Cubs' clubhouse, someone had written, with some level of cleverness: "Happy Mudder's Day!"

The conditions, including an all-morning downpour, north winds gusting up to 24 mph and an iffy forecast, were sufficiently bad that both clubs decided that their scheduled headliner starting pitchers would be better off working on another day.

So Arizona's Randy Johnson and Chicago's Carlos Zambrano were replaced by Edgar Gonzalez and Sean Gallagher, respectively. The Cubs, after a 58-minute rain delay, got the better of the contest, 6-4, with pinch-hitter Daryle Ward supplying the game-winning double in the eighth. You had to give the D-backs -- the ultimate warm-weather, retractable-roof outfit -- credit for sticking with it in a climate that was hospitable neither to them nor to the nation's pastime. But you had to give the Cubs a sweep.

Why might each of these teams be better this season, when both were already division winners in 2007? In the case of the Cubs, their lineup has been bolstered considerably by the addition of right fielder Kosuke Fukudome and the emergence of catcher Geovany Soto.

Fukudome is yet another Japanese player who has mastered the fundamentals of the game. For instance, his sacrifice bunt attempt in the eighth inning on Saturday was so good, so well-placed, that it became a bunt hit, while moving the winning run to third base. Beyond that, Fukudome is a more patient and selective hitter than most of his colleagues in the Cubs lineup and as a left-handed hitter gives them better balance.

Soto was a late-season contributor for the Cubs in 2007, but now, his run-production ability has made him an integral part of the offense. These two players make the Cubs a more solid operation than they were last year.

"I would say that they're better," Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin said. "You look at their lineup up and down, with Fukudome it makes them a deeper lineup, and then you have Soto with more experience. He really helps them out on the offensive end, too. One through eight they have as good a lineup as anybody in the National League. And I think the numbers would support that."

The numbers do support that. The Cubs lead the National League in runs scored. Fukudome is hitting .326 with a .418 on-base percentage, but he has been fully credited, reaching the cultural pinnacle of a Sports Illustrated cover. Soto is hitting .314 with a 417 on-base percentage and a .587 slugging percentage, but he may still be a bit under-recognized.

"He's been swinging the bat," Piniella said of Soto. "He's doing a nice job, he really is. He's learning the pitching in the league a little bit. Soto, we've had him in the seventh hole, we moved him to the sixth and I like him in both spots. Against a left-hander we can move him to the five hole."

Even amid the ongoing local debate about whether Alfonso Soriano is really a leadoff hitter, the depth of the Cubs lineup has been impressive.

"That's part of the reason that we can have success offensively," Piniella said. "We need total contributions. Our sixth, seventh and eighth spots have done really well for us this year."

While it may not be surprising that the Cubs lead the league in scoring, the fact that the Diamondbacks are second in runs scored is at least a marginal surprise. Even while winning the NL West last year and advancing to the NL Championship Series, the D-backs had some offensive issues.

This year, the Diamondbacks may be stronger than ever in the pitching staff, particularly with the emergence of Max Scherzer. Offensively, their talented young position players have made the kind of overall progress that talented young players can make.

"We're better this year offensively," Melvin said. "We feel that we can beat you in several different ways. We love our pitching staff, whether it's the rotation or the bullpen. We feel like we don't need to score 10 runs to win, which we were doing earlier on."

What happened in Wrigley Field this weekend was part of an offensive slump that showed up to some extent in the Diamondbacks' recent home stand. It was almost inevitable, given how dominant the D-backs had been earlier, that some sort of bump in the road would be struck, that some sort of slowdown would occur.

"These things are going to happen," Melvin said. "It's just something you go through over the course of the season. You keep grinding on it, grinding, keep expecting to win, but no one is going to go 20-8 out of every 28 games."

The Cubs were the big winners this weekend and their success moved them back into first place in the NL Central. There is good reason to believe that this could still be their spot at the end of September. The Diamondbacks, meanwhile, hit a rough patch, but they were still a first-place club as they left the upper Midwest. You can never state with absolute assurance what the baseball world will look like in five months, but another October meeting between these two teams is much more likely than far-fetched.