Last week I wrote about the White Sox, and not just the form, but the fashion with which they whiffed on priority free agents like Manny Machado and most recently Bryce Harper. It seems once again the Sox will spend another summer looking at the advanced batting numbers of star “prospects” instead of watching the win-column grow.
On the north side of town, another story is being written. It’s shaping up to be a much easier read than the last two.
The Cubs spent the entire winter of 2016 partying. They had broken a curse unlike anything else in professional sports. They were real-life superheroes. I don’t think anyone on that roster paid for a dinner in Chicago from November to April.
But much like you know from your (LEGAL) college days, the biggest parties often come with the biggest hangovers. We all know how it goes: Not feeling like yourself for 48 hours because your Bad-Influence Friend (trademark pending) was extra persuasive in saying half-priced tequila was a sign from the gods.
Except the Cubs haven’t felt like themselves in 24 months, and their Bad-Influence Friend was an entire fanbase.
I don’t begrudge fanbases for lofty expectations. Championship windows are hard to find, and rarely last as long as you foresee. When you have one, you have to take advantage of it. Analysts will often point to the Cubs 90-plus win records in 2017 and 2018 to justify the opinion that these Cubs have not fallen off at all.
But much like a pitcher’s W-L record, you have to take the context into account before deciding how much weight to give it. The Cubs did win 92 and 95 contests the last two years, but they’ve done so in a league that has not produced a World Series Champion in those two years. 2017 was a two-team race between the Cubs and the Dodgers, and when it came time to play the one team that was spending with you, you got beat soundly. In 2018 the Dodgers were competing with the Diamondbacks and the Rockies, while the Cubs couldn’t fend off the surging underdog Brewers. Sure they won a lot of games, but the balance of power over that time has swung swiftly to the American League.
We talk about conference disparity in basketball and hockey a lot. But for some reason forget baseball when it has maybe the most severe effects. Interleague play happens far less in baseball than in any other sport. So why don’t we put as much padding on the Cubs’ last two campaigns as, say, the team who wins the NBA eastern conference where immediately everyone comments how they would have been the fifth seed in the West. How would the Cubs have fared in the AL east last year? Ninety-five wins seems a bit bullish.
None of this is to say that the Cubs were a bad team or that we should all be panicking about a continuation of struggles. But your eyes were not deceiving you. This was an organization thats looked sluggish through long portions of the last two seasons. Out of the gate in 2017 and down the stretch in 2018, they looked like a ballclub without much gas in the tank.
This past winter seemed to put the entire organization into the pressure cooker. Hitters like Kris Bryant, Wilson Contreras, Kyle Schwarber and Ian Happ will all be asked to, unlike last year, live up to their potential. Pitchers Yu Darvish and Jose Quintana will have to live up to the heavy prices it took to acquire them. Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer have to get more creative than ever to aid an ailing bullpen without unloading the Brinks truck. And Tom Ricketts will have to try much harder to keep his family out of the news for the totally wrong reasons.
I was met with confused looks when I told friends over the weekend that this was the most excited I’ve been for baseball in three years. It’s simply not as fun when everyone predicts you to win a hundred games and be a shoe-in for the World Series.
The Cubs are hunters once again. They have something to prove. They once again have to “try not to suck.” Postgame renditions of “Go Cubs Go” can once again be a celebration, instead of an expectation.
– Jake Logli, SportsFan 1330