October 14, 2019: Peeling It Back

Ok, I think it’s been long enough. The Cubs have been done for more than 2 weeks now. Do you still miss them? I do. I have been watching these Cubless playoffs, for the first time since 2014, and it’s been as expected; I’d much rather see my team be in the playoffs rather than picturing them watching these games just like me.

I did say I was going to go back, and try to figure out what went wrong. I’ve seen articles about the Cubs posted, but I haven’t been compelled to read any of them; I just wasn’t ready. I needed time to sort through my thoughts, not wanting to read others on the matter. More than anything, I needed time removed from it, letting my emotions come back down to earth, and not write this pissed off. I think I am ready now. In this latest session, I’m going to start peeling it back, attempting to go layer by layer through this Cubs team. I’m going to play Theo, or maybe even Tom, figuring out what happened and what should happen to do everything possible to avoid this year from repeating itself. Deep breath…

What did happen was an 84 win season. If this were like most years of my life, if this were like all those years where the Cubs barely had enough to make a run for it, maybe in that universe, this season would be looked at as successful. Starting from the year I was born, the Cubs have had more wins than this season exactly 12 times; there have been 31 seasons worse than this one. Besides showing my age, it shows that this year falls into the less than one third group. So more than two thirds of the time, the Cubs have done worse than this year…strictly going by the wins and losses. Yet, this year was worse than the numbers show.

Besides living in a new Cubs universe, where making the playoffs is unacceptable (do you know how many years I would have given my right nut just to make the playoffs?), which by the way before these last 4 years has happened exactly 6 times in my lifetime; think about that. The Cubs have made the playoffs almost the same amount of time these past 5 years than the previous 39 of my life, which is not counting the 29 year playoff drought previous to that. It just confirms what I’ve been saying; we are living in the golden era of Cubs baseball. Ok, you could certainly make an argument for the turn of the century, the early 1900s to be exact, but who was alive for that? These have been the greatest years of our Cubs fandom lives.

I’m not sure if I’m trying to make myself feel better, but the point I’m trying to get to, is that regardless of all these win loss records, playoff appearances, the golden era, and oh yeah, a World Series title, this year was worse because the Cubs underachieved. This Cubs roster is loaded, based on the scientific fact that when my son and I pick our favorite players, there are about a dozen to choose from; we’ll talk about all of them. The Cubs pissed me off because we missed an opportunity this year. For whatever reason, it didn’t come together. This is the mystery I’m going to try to solve. Let’s dig deeper.