Chicago Cubs: Where does the 2016 team rank among recent champions?

Chicago Cubs: How did their regular season compare to other champions?

Besides a hiccup smack dab in the middle of the season when they lost nine of 10 games, the Chicago Cubs dominated the 2016 regular season.

They shot out to a 35-15 record through the first two months of the season, and finished the campaign with an MLB-best 103 wins, eight games clear of the Washington Nationals and the Texas Rangers who both finished with 95 victories.

Here’s how the Cubs regular season stacks up to some of the other World Series winners in the last 25 years:

• 1998 Yankees: 114 wins
• 2018 Red Sox: 108 wins
• 2009 Yankees and 2016 Cubs: 103 wins
• 2017 Astros: 101 wins

The Cubs are right up there among teams that dominated the regular season and then went on to win the World Series.

Chicago Cubs: Dominating the stat sheets all year

The way the Cubs stacked up against other squads in key statistical categories in the regular season unsurprisingly reflects why they had 103 wins.

Chicago had a double-take inducing +270 run differential in 2016, which was almost 100 runs clear of the second-best club, the Boston Red Sox (+176).

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Offensively, the Cubs were third in the game in runs, first in offensive wins above replacement and third in wOBA. From Dexter Fowler at the top to the Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez grinder in the middle to getting a combined 45 home runs and 218 RBI from the seventh, eighth and ninth spot there were no breaks in this lineup.

Defensively is where this team shined though compiling a whopping 107 defensive runs saved which cleared the next best club, the Houston Astros, by 30 runs (the Cubs’ 107 defensive runs saved was fourth most of all-time according to FanGraphs).

Certainly helping out the fielders was a starting pitching unit that didn’t give up much hard contact. The five mainstay starters Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, Kyle Hendricks, John Lackey and Jason Hammel had a combined 2.96 ERA which led MLB. It’s also the second-best ERA for an entire regular season for a starting pitching staff in the last 25 years (first was the 2011 Phillies who had guys like Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt and a much younger Cole Hamels on it).

Joe Maddon’s relief corps wasn’t quite as good as their counterparts in the starting rotation, but they still were top 10 in MLB during the regular season in combined ERA.

Chicago Cubs: Not dominant in October, but they came through when it counted

Where the Chicago Cubs fall short of some of these other postseason squads was a lack of sheer dominance in the postseason.

We hear it all the time from our counterparts on the South Side. That White Sox team that won the 2005 World Series lost just one game in the postseason. It was the first game of the American League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Angels.

Meanwhile, there was a lot more adversity on the Cubs’ road to winning their World Series Championship in 2016. They were 11-6 overall in the playoffs .

Here’s how this stacks up against other World Series champions in the last 25 years. Ultimately, wins are all that matters in the postseason which is why we’re going with record over things like run differential, etc.

• 11-1 (2005 White Sox, 1999 Yankees)
• 11-2 (1998 Yankees)
• 11-3 (1995 Braves, 2004 Red Sox, 2007 Red Sox, 2008 Phillies, 2018 Red Sox)
• 12-4 (2014 Giants)
• 11-4 (1996 Yankees, 2009 Yankees, 2010 Giants)
• 12-5 (2013 Red Sox, 2019 Nationals)
• 11-5 (1997 Marlins, 2000 Yankees, 2002 Angels, 2006 Cardinals, 2012 Giants, 2015 Royals)
• 11-6 (2001 Diamondbacks, 2003 Marlins, 2016 Chicago Cubs)
• 11-7 (2011 Cardinals, 2017 Astros)

Ultimately though all those teams won championships which is all that matters. How they got there is irrelevant (minus the 2017 Astros and that whole cheating thing).

In an idealistic world, we could put all these guys in time machines, return them to their primes, and have each of these teams battle each other out in a bracket-format tournament between the greatest teams we’ve seen in the last 25 years.

That of course is impossible. Everything about ranking these teams is speculative. But at least based on sheer dominance in a team’s individual season, the Cubs rank right up there as one of the best.