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

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.