Chicago Cubs: Signs of the downfall were present even back in 2016

On November 2, 2016, the Chicago Cubs turned an MLB The Show commercial into reality, ending a drought that began when Austria-Hungary was still a thing. Those warm feelings persist; none of us who witnessed the event, either live or remotely, will ever forget it.

Theo Epstein will always be a Chicago hero, and his statue will surely be erected in the 2030s somewhere in the sprawling corridors of the Ricketts Sloan Nuveen Wrigley Sportsplex.

But it wasn’t enough to just kill the curse; Cubs fans wanted to shove it into a woodchipper. Dynasty was the next step, but one never taken. In fact, the second-best year of the Epstein Cubs was 2015, the year before the year, when the Cubs flew the “W” 97 times.

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Today, with Jed Hoyer having waved the white flag, it all feels a bit disappointing. This team was supposed to be better than one ring and some Bryzzo commercials. But a closer look at the 2016 roster shows that danger signs were already present.

As rated by Fangraphs WAR, the Cubs had six All-Star caliber players, that is, players with a WAR of at least 4.0. The six were Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Dexter Fowler, Ben Zobrist, Kyle Hendricks and Jon Lester. These six players accounted for just over half the team’s total WAR (29.8 out of 55.9).

That’s a lot of eggs in very few baskets, and three of those baskets were old. Fowler, Lester and Zobrist were all at least 30, making it unlikely they would be able to sustain their outstanding performance levels long-term.

Zobrist, at age 35, would take a step back the following year, before roaring back with an outstanding season in 2018, only to have a messy divorce claim his career thereafter. Fowler and Lester had some good seasons left, in Lester’s case quite a few, but neither would get back to their 2016 success; and Fowler had, in any event, played his last game as a Cub .

Another warning sign: Lester and Kyle Hendricks had two of the most remarkable pitching seasons in Cubs history. Lester’s ERA- was 59, and Hendricks’ an even more amazing 52. To put that in perspective, Hall of Famer Greg Maddux beat Lester’s ERA- only five times in his storied 23 year career, and Hendricks’ only twice.

So Lester and Hendricks didn’t just pitch like one of the best pitchers ever. They pitched like the one of the best pitchers ever at his very best. Regression was as inevitable as a beer snake on a hot Wrigley night.

Chicago Cubs: That team wasn’t quite as young as you might think

We think of the 2016 Cubs as a young squad, and for the hitters that was true. But the pitching staff was the second-oldest in all the land, trailing only the Geritol Giants.

This again suggested some probable decline unless Epstein refreshed the staff, especially since Joe Maddon miraculously had coaxed 126 sub-3.00 ERA innings combined from journeymen Travis Wood and Trevor Cahill.

If the Cubs were to become a dynasty, Epstein would have to go shopping in the offseason. So he went down to Baseball Depot and brought back … some clearance items. Outfielder Jon Jay and pitchers Brett Anderson and Wade Davis would be the only significant acquisitions, none of whom would amass even 2.0 WAR in 2017.

Perhaps Epstein was counting on player development to save the team. We’ll look at that in an upcoming post.