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The Cubs as we know them are done
When the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, I told myself that everything else would be gravy. Watching my favorite baseball team win a championship for the first time in 108 years, at 21 years old, with my best friends, was all I needed.
It was a perfect night. It was a beautiful fall day and I drank until the bar lights came on and strolled into my Thursday morning classes looking like a disgusting, hungover moron, all while still being a tad bit drunk.
I called my father — who was in Cleveland for the game — to relish in the moment that night, and it was a wonderful call. It took about five minutes to realize, however, that he was already in the car on the way home to Chicago. It couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes after Kris Bryant made the play to win it.
In perhaps the most Dad move of all time, my old man beat out the traffic of Game 7 of the World Series in lieu of watching his favorite team celebrate their first World Series in a century. It still makes me laugh.
(This is also relevant because of Jimmy Butler’s Sunday night performance in the Finals, but one time I was at a game where Jimmy Butler hit a jump shot at the buzzer to beat the Brooklyn Nets, and after cheering with my brother, I turned around to see my Dad was no longer standing next to me. Confused, I turned to the exit, and just in time he peaked his head out of the tunnel and mouthed ‘Let’s get out of here.’ It’s like the rush of beating traffic out of the UC to make our 15-minute drive two minutes shorter is greater than a buzzer beater. Just strange behavior.)
I’m sure you all felt the same in 2016. But you also felt, like me, that the Cubs would be competing for World Series for the next, I don’t know, eight years. At least five! It’s been nothing like that.
I don’t begrudge Theo Epstein for anything. The dude brought a World Series to the North Side and perfected a five-year plan that he laid out for himself, one of the most impressive executive performances in the history of sports.
But man, my proclamation that I’d always be satisfied with the Cubs because of 2016 was built in with the assumption that they’d be playing at a high level still for the next half decade or so.
Now, to be fair, if you would have told my younger self that I’d be complaining about a team that had made the playoffs five out of the last six years, I’d slap my current self in the face. But to live through this era — basically coinciding with Jon Lester’s contract — and have the climax so early on, and the downturn so much earlier than expected, it hurts in a way that I didn’t think would be possible.
Now, Theo looks to be out the door, either this year or next. Jon Lester was robbed of a chance to pitch in Wrigley one last time, and it feels like us fans never got the chance to say goodbye to a guy that has symbolically meant everything to this franchise.
The Cubs are not great anymore, but the former charm of the not-great Cubs has been swept away. The Cubs have receded back to the middle of the pack, but there’s no longer the ‘Get ‘em next year’ vibe, no longer the WGN charm, no longer the ‘Let’s play two’ on a summer day mystique. They will remain one of the most expensive tickets in baseball, no matter what kind of rebuild or retool takes place. There will continue to be out-of-place buildings thrust up around the park, and Wrigleyville will continue to look less and less like the Wrigleyville we grew up with. The Cubs will continue to be on a channel that barely made it on my TV screen for opening day, one that was showing a national betting show on Monday instead of Theo Epstein’s year-ending press conference for some reason.
And again, that’s okay. Having a nicer area around Wrigley and a nicer stadium to pad the Ricketts’ pockets for a World Series is an exchange I’d make every day out of the week.
But man, it wasn’t supposed to erode like this. We weren’t supposed to be losing to inferior opponents in the first round in 2020. We were supposed to be telling the Cardinals that their reign of terror in the NL Central was over, if not for good, at least for a long while.
When I opened my computer tonight, I expected the words that came out to be violent and immediately angry. Those words will come. But for some reason, sadness prevailed. Because it does feel like the end of an era, one that was magical at its outset, but ultimately bittersweet.
Will the Cubs ever be the lovable losers again? I don’t think so. They have too much money at their disposal to trot out Emilio Bonifacio in the leadoff spot anymore. But if you’ve watched this team for the last three years, the division title this year is misleading. This team is far closer to mediocrity than their playoff appearances suggest.
That means change will come. The Cubs have a lot of big decisions to make. I’m sure everyone has seen that stat by this point, the one that shows how brutal Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez have been — a collective 19-140 in the playoffs since 2016. To be honest, it felt as bad as the numbers suggest.
Kris Bryant’s career arc perfectly aligns with the bittersweet nature of this era. Rookie of the Year in 2015 and a near World Series berth for a team that didn’t expect to be there; MVP in 2016 and the World Series; a great year in 2017 and a NLCS berth; an okay year riddled with injuries and a Wild Card exit in 2018; a just above average year for a star with ebbs and flows and no playoffs in 2019; and in 2020, an awful year that finished with getting swept out of an expanded playoff by the Miami Marlins.
Javier Baez is all of a sudden more the 2014 version of himself than the 2018 version. Anthony Rizzo is still Anthony Rizzo, but after making three straight All-Star teams from 2014 to 2016, he’s failed to make it back there.
Kyle Schwarber has become an unpredictable part of the lineup. Every time I think the guy is heating up, he falls into a slump.
The farm system has been exhausted — a good move in theory, but not in practice — to expand our World Series window. It didn’t pay off. We’re left with Yu Darvish (who would’ve guessed that after his first year?) and Kyle Hendricks as two of the only positive notes heading into 2021.
Scoring one run in two games against the Marlins was the worst possible version of this year’s playoffs, and for some reason I’m not surprised.
The ninth inning of Game Two made me legitimately ashamed to be a Cubs fan, and unleashed the meatball in me that I’ve worked to suppress, especially in baseball discussions, over the last five or so years.
To be embarrassed by the Miami Marlins pitching staff when you’re a heavy favorite and still look at pitch after pitch from Brandon Kintzler in the ninth inning like he’s fucking Mariano Rivera is beyond humiliating.
The fact that we have to send Willson Contreras home from second in the middle of the game on a shallow bloop to right field because it’s our only chance of scoring a run is unacceptable for a “division winner.”
Yu Darvish and Kyle Hendricks threw about 14 perfectly pitched innings and — like the Bears defense — had to head to the mound towards the end of game knowing their team was going to do nothing to back them up.
Two great years from pitchers in their prime and two great playoff starts went completely to waste.
The September collapse in 2018 was the fool me once. Shame on you. The 2019 experience was the second time I was fooled, shame on me. This year, the shame remains with me, and it runs deep.
I wish I had an analytical breakdown of what the Cubs need to do to continue to compete in the playoffs moving forward. But for now, I don’t. For now, I’m just left disgusted.
And the meatball in me is still here. Obviously the roster needs to be shaken up, but for God’s sake, can we get some guys in here who are going to take it upon themselves to make sure that this never happens again? Can we have some guys who step up to the plate in an elimination game and say, ‘This might not end well, but god dammit I’m going down swinging’?
Where did the fight in this team go? The irony of Jason Heyward doubling to kick off the ninth and then three outs flashing by in the blink of an eye afterward is a perfect encapsulation of this season. To think that he was one of the two best hitters on the team this year — him and Ian Happ, who half of the fanbase thought was done two years ago — is something else.
The Cubs were the 4th worst hitting team in all of baseball this year. Is that a lineup you want to commit $400 million to in the next two years? I don’t want to hear about another contract extension until these guys start proving they’re capable and worth it.
A .220 batting average in the regular season. A .387 slugging percentage. One run in the playoffs.
The Cubs built the greatest ship this city had seen in a century in 2016. Since then, it’s been the Titanic, and instead of avoiding the iceberg altogether, we’ve just been plugging holes. And I feel like I need to find myself a life boat.
The plan was to write about the White Sox before or after the Cubs eulogy today, but sorry Sox fans, the Fire Ricky Renteria blog will have to wait. For now, enjoy the ride. The other side of it doesn’t feel so good. I’ll write more about the South Siders sometime this week.
The Blackhawks made some trades too. If I commented on them right now I’d sound incredibly dumb and uneducated, so I’ll abstain for the time being.
Who would you rather have — Jimmy Butler, who just outplayed LeBron James and Anthony Davis in the Finals? Or Zach LaVine, a guy who thinks he’s Michael Jordan but is more likely Lou Williams; Lauri Markkanen, a guy who seems content with cashing a paycheck and chucking up five threes a game whether they go in or not and losing 60 games per year; and Kris Dunn — who averages a lot of steals? This is a rhetorical question.
Comment:
As you well know Andrew, I am not well suited for sitting in traffic. Therefore, I am doing you a favor by getting out of there and avoiding my road rage. Besides, it was after midnight and I had a six hour drive home. Most importantly, I was there!