5 most overlooked reasons Cubs aren't in the World Series

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For the third time in four years the Dodgers are in the World Series as National League champs.And for the fourth consecutive season the team that beat them in the NL Championship Series on the way to one of the most celebrated World Series titles of all-time in 2016 is not.That historically young 2016 Cubs champion, in fact, has advanced from only one playoff round out of four since then despite the dynasty widely predicted for the long-stagnant Cubs.One look up and down the Dodgers roster — from Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler to Cody Bellinger and Mookie Betts — and it’s easy to see why the Dodgers are back in the World Series.Their opponent from Tampa Bay, a 40-game winner during this 60-game season, has turned run prevention and scoring efficiency into an art form — surviving a seven-game series in the ALCS against an Astros team that had played in two of the last three World Series.But the Cubs?The team with the third-highest-paid 28-man roster in the game this season has had well documented hitting problems the last few seasons with its touted hitting core from that 2016 title.But at least five not-so-obvious factors also have conspired to keep the Cubs out of the World Series since 2016 — and likely will result in a roster overhaul starting this winter.

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The 2016-21 CBA maintained strict penalties for exceeding the luxury-tax threshold for payrolls in consecutive years while increasing those thresholds, year-over-year, by less than 1 percent in three of the five years and by 3.2 and 3.0 percent in the two others — not even close to keeping pace with average team revenue increases or average salary increases.

The result? “If you look across the game, the teams that won the World Series early in the CBA that have players who have moved through the arbitration process and are making a lot of money in arbitration added free agents along the way and won World Series in doing so — us, the Red Sox (2018), the Astros (2017) — there’s a pattern here that was somewhat anticipated,” Cubs president Theo Epstein said during Cubs Convention in January. “Once the CBA was announced it was clear that for the big-market teams, as you move deeper into the CBA, unless you get an opportunity to reset along the way, it was going to be tough to squeeze additional talent on the roster.”

The Red Sox were able to get back under the threshold before the 2020 season in large part by trading Betts to the Dodgers in February with a year left on his contract. The Cubs had their eye on a possible roster adjustment at the trade deadline before the COVID-19 pandemic altered plans.

“That’s not an excuse,” Epstein said in January. “It’s not to blame anything. But that’s part of a pattern going on in the game.”

Yet the Astros missed the World Series by one game this year and made it back in 2019, so what the…

 

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We all have heard by now about the Cubs’ inability to draft and develop a starting pitcher for their rotation in nine years under Epstein — and few relievers.

It has specifically and most loudly haunted them the last three years as the hitting core reached arbitration (see “Collective bargaining agreement”) while lack of back-end rotation help in the system factored into the 2017 need to trade prospects Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease to the White Sox for José Quintana and subsequently to sign Tyler Chatwood and Yu Darvish to free agent contracts a few months later.

Chatwood’s quick descent into bust status and Darvish’s early struggles and elbow injury, in turn, led to a 2018 deadline deal for Cole Hamels — and the need to stretch the payroll at the end of that season to exercise a $20 million option for 2019.

In 49 playoff games the last six years, the Cubs haven’t had a pitch thrown by a homegrown pitcher, and top five salaries in their store-bought rotation this season cost a combined $77.5 million this year (before pro-rating for shortened pandemic season).

Compare that to the big-spending Dodgers, who started a homegrown pitcher in all seven NLCS games, including two rookies, with a combined five-man cost of $33.7 million (before pro-rating) — just $2.6 million for everybody not named Clayton Kershaw.

And remember those Astros with the Jose Altuve-Alex Bregman-Carlos Correa-George Springer hitting core reaching arbitration since their 2017 title? Well, even after losing Charlie Morton to free agency after 2018 and ace Justin Verlander to injury this season, Houston had enough pitching production from its farm system to start homegrown pitchers in six of its seven ALCS games against the Rays this year, including two rookies.

 

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As much as the Cubs are to blame for their own shortcomings in returning to the World Series in the four seasons since their championship, the happenstance of their division may have contributed at least twice.

Their 95 wins at the end of 162 games in 2018 would have won any other division in the majors except the AL East by at least three games. And their record in 86 non-division games that years (.621 winning percentage) was far better than in the 77 games within the division (.532).

But the Brewers had the hottest finish in baseball that season, catching the Cubs on the final weekend with a 7-0 final week to force a one-game playoff the Brewers won, forcing the Cubs into a wild-card game they lost in 13 innings.

And during this aberration of all aberration seasons, with teams facing only nine regional opponents each, the Cubs (thanks in large part to a 13-3 start) won an NL Central that looked formidable, on the one hand, with four of five teams making the playoffs, but that proved anything but by the time all were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

In fact, seven of the 10 teams in the AL/NL Central stack claimed nearly half of the 16 spots in the expanded playoff field — only to go a combined 2-14 and all get bounced in the first round.

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The Cubs led the majors in nearly every key hitting and pitching statistic during their 103-win season on the way to the 2016 title. But what they did arguably better than anything else was turn balls in play into outs.

Since then, not quite so much.

In 2016 Dexter Fowler was in center field, allowing perennial Gold Glove fielder Jason Heyward to stay in right; Javy Báez spread his fielding prowess to three infield positions for stretches; Addison Russell was the primary shortstop; and Kyle Schwarber was on the disabled list all year, putting better fielders (at that point in Schwarber’s career) in left.

By at least one metric — defensive runs saved — the Cubs (107) led the majors in fielding by a larger percentage margin (28 percent) than any team has since (next-best Astros had 77 DRS that year).

As the fielding alignment changed and other teams improved, the Cubs fell in subsequent years to seventh (36 DRS), sixth (52), 22nd (minus-14) and, this year, sixth (23).

They’re not bad, but they haven’t reached anything close to their championship level of fielding since 2016, which is especially important for a team that doesn’t have the kind of power-pitching strikeout staff that most of the other 2020 playoff teams did.

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Wait, what?

Isn’t that what the Cubs are best known for — with Kris Bryant, Báez, Schwarber and Albert Almora Jr. all part of that championship team, and Ian Happ joining them the year after?

Yes. And what do all of them have in common? They’re all single-digit, first-round draft picks selected between 2011 and 2015.

Beyond that, the Cubs have had one hitter drafted outside the overall top nine in the last nine years — 18th-rounder David Bote — stick for a full season on the roster (although 24th overall pick Nico Hoerner was on the roster for this 60-game season).

For all the criticism of this group for an offense Epstein said “broke” in 2018 and hasn’t effectively been repaired, the problem hasn’t been that a given core group hasn’t developed collectively as expected. It’s that nobody has come along behind them to push or replace them.

“For every organization I think it starts with having players behind players behind players behind players,” said Mets hitting coach Chili Davis late last summer, about 10 months after being fired just one year into his term as Cubs hitting coach.

“If you don’t have a lot of guys behind the guys in the big leagues, then you’re stuck with what you have in the big leagues, and you’re going to play that card until your hand’s done,” said Davis — one of 10 big-league hitting coaches or assistant hitting coaches the Cubs have had in the last nine seasons.

The Dodgers, for instance, had five homegrown hitters get at least nine at-bats during the NLCS, including an 11th-round pick (one-time All-Star Joc Pederson), a sixth-rounder (rookie Edwin Rios) and a fourth-rounder (Game 7 star Cody Bellinger).

Bellinger is basically the Dodgers’ Kris Bryant, a former Rookie of the year, MVP winner with multiple All-Star selections who’s versatile enough to play in the outfield and infield — and who was drafted 122 spots behind No. 2 pick Bryant.

As Davis said last summer: “You can bluff your way through it for a couple years, but eventually you’re going to have to start moving guys.”

(see: “Collective bargaining agreement”). 

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