CHICAGO — It’s too early to say this Alex Bregman thing isn’t going to work out.

Bregman is only halfway through the first year of a five-year, $175 million deal with the Chicago Cubs, so there’s plenty of time for him to start living up to his reputation as one of baseball’s top hitters. He homered Tuesday for the first time since June 11 and went 0 for 5 in Wednesday’s 23-3 rout of the San Diego Padres, as the Cubs hit eight home runs before a crowd of 37,311.

But it’s obvious Bregman has some work to do to convince Cubs fans he’s the player they thought they were getting when he arrived to great fanfare over the winter. And his thumbs-down gesture after homering Tuesday probably won’t help matters, even as he said Wednesday it meant nothing at all.

The Cubs are riding yet another wave even without Bregman being Bregman.

Dansby Swanson hit three home runs to give him five in two days, while his 26 RBIs in 10 days is a team record. Michael Conforto added a pair of homers and Pete Crow-Armstrong, Seiya Suzuki and Michael Busch also went deep on another sweltering day at Wrigley.

The Cubs won their fifth straight and improved to a major-league best 15-4 since June 11.

There was plenty of media speculation before the slugfest about what Bregman was trying to say with his thumbs-down, which he repeated with a thumbs-down emoji on Instagram along with a snippet of a Drake song about being unappreciated:

“I don’t understand why you blame me/Just take me as I am, it’s the same me.”

Was he starting a Drake-like beef with Cubs fans, or with the media who reported on his lack of hustle on a grounder Sunday in Milwaukee, or with Marquee analyst Jim Deshaies, who called the lack of hustle in real time?

It’s anyone’s guess.

ESPN’s Jesse Rogers asked Bregman on Wednesday what the gesture meant.

“Nothing,” he said.

So it was not a message?

“No,” he said.

Well, then, case closed. An empty gesture that will never be explained.

Bregman is too smart to start anything with fans, media, broadcasters or even Kendrick Lamar (just in case the Drake song was a message), so perhaps he was just having fun with his teammates. Players make so many team-specific hand gestures to each other these days it’s really impossible to know what they’re all referring to, even if one cared.

Even if it was aimed at one of the media members, the thumbs-down gesture — a la Siskel & Ebert — is probably the least offensive hand gesture a player could make.

At least he didn’t dump ice water on anyone, as former Cub Dave Kingman did to Daily Herald reporter Don Friske in 1980, saying: “There, that will give you enough for two stories.”

On second thought, that might have felt refreshing under Wednesday’s heat dome.

The thumbs-down gesture became a thing a few years ago in New York when Javier Baez and Francisco Lindor started doing it in response to booing Mets fans. Team owner Steve Cohen quickly put a stop to it, telling the New York Post “they hit the third rail … by messing with fans, and it is unacceptable.”

When catcher Todd Hundley was dealing with booing Cubs fans in the summer of 2002, he held up a middle finger as he headed toward first base after a home run. Hundley later said he was directing the finger to a couple of heckling fans and apologized, saying “I lost my head going around the bases.”

Bregman doesn’t need to apologize for a thumbs-down since he hasn’t explained the reason for it, even if it was in response to fans or the media.

As we learned during the great Cubs-versus-media beef in summer 2004, when reliever LaTroy Hawkins called a news conference to announce he wasn’t speaking to the media and reliever Kent Mercker sent messages to the press box complaining about Steve Stone and Chip Caray, picking a fight with the media and broadcasters is a no-win situation.

Milton Bradley knew that in 2009, and dispensed some sage advice to teammates via the media.

“Don’t read the newspaper,” Bradley said. “Don’t watch TV. Just play, because we have everything we need right here. If we stay together in here, cut out all the outside BS and we’ll be fine. There’s way too much hoopla, there’s way too much talk. There’s way too much speculation.”

Speculation was that Bradley was talking his way out of town. He later ripped Chicago waiters, of all people, for “bad-mouthing” him. Bradley eventually was suspended from the team for the final 15 games for referring to “negativity” surrounding the organization.

Whatever motivates a player to succeed is OK, as long as it’s not obscene, whether it’s positive or negative reinforcement.

“I think we all do both from time to time, especially those of us — and you guys get it too — that are getting constant feedback on our performance, right?” manager Craig Counsell said. “When you get constant feedback on your performance, you kind of toggle between picking the lovers and the haters and who’s motivating you.”

I’m not sure how Counsell saw my Chicago Tribune email inbox, but that’s another story.

The Cubs probably should stop reading the papers and watching TV and listening to sports-talk radio, except for their paid weekly stints, of course.

In a season as strange as this one has been, it’s bound to get even crazier in the second half.

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