The Chicago Cubs hired away Theo Epstein from the Red Sox in 2011. For their fans, the journey back to competitiveness and relevance has been a long and often frustrating one. But this year finally saw the plan start to come together. The Cubs won 97 games in the regular season, which was the third best record on baseball. It’s just unfortunate they had to find that success as a part of the National League Central, where the two best records in baseball also resided.
Instead of winning a division title — something they’d have done in every other division — they were relegated to the second Wild Card. They still overcame some long odds to win the WC play-in game against the Pirates. Furthermore they bested the best team in the regular season — the 100 win Cardinals — to make it to the National League Championship Series. Here’s where things have gone wrong. The Cubs have lost each of the first three games to the Mets — arguably the weakest NL Postseason team — and face elimination on Wednesday night. Should that come to pass, a lot of Cubs fans will be asking themselves if this season was a failure after all.
LCS Coverage
For the Cubs, it is different. They too went reasonably big for a starting pitcher. Jon Lester received a six-year contract worth $155 million. But that’s really where the similarities end. The Cubs are comprised largely of younger players, many of which were exposed to the majors for the first time. Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, and Addison Russell are the big three.
Those kids had varying degrees of success lead by Bryant’s staggering 6.5 fWAR. There’s every reason to believe this is a team that can continue to improve over the next several seasons. Schwarber and Russell were only around for part of the year, so a full season with them is already an improvement. That’s not to mention other players that have yet to rise up from the minors.
And of course the Cubs haven’t even begun to really spend. They will likely add another front line starting pitcher this winter. Free agency has a lot to offer on that front. Imagine what the Cubs could do if you add a guy like David Price or Zack Greinke to the frontline duo of Jon Lester and Jake Arrieta.
The Cubs aren’t just planning for right now either. They’re still adding talent to the farm system. They made six higher profile signings on the first day of the current international signing period alone. And more recently, they surprised everyone by nabbing one of the top Cuban players, Eddy Julio Martinez, from under the noses of the Giants. These are things that won’t impact the major league team for years. But that’s kind of the point. It’s an effort to keep the major league team strong continually.
All of this that’s exactly what Theo Epstein has been planning for this entire time. That’s why you can’t judge the Cubs season as a complete failure should they be eliminated in the NLCS. The plan is only beginning to come to fruition. And should things continue according to the plan, the Cubs should only get stronger over the next several years. Think about that – in five years when we look back at the Cubs, the 97 win team from 2015 might very well have been the weakest of the bunch. But that’s not a sign of failure, it’s just the beginning of success.
