The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three-run homers. - Earl Weaver
Dear Dave,
I write to you thirty-five games into the baseball season, from the perspective of a throne whose polish and luster is quickly fading. The Royals have lost twelve of their last seventeen and find themselves 6.5 games back of those south-siders opposite your beloved Cubs. I once would've been very okay...maybe even pleased with being just one game under .500 at this point in the season. But 17-18 is the epitome of mediocrity, and mediocrity will not do for a team that has been to consecutive World Series and ran away with the AL Central division just last year. This team is in desperate need of dusting off the cobwebs and rediscovering how to be championship-caliber.
A lot has not exactly gone according to plan, and one might have said there were ominous signs on the horizon, even after the Royals' 8-2 start. The offense had struggled to that point, and there had been many tight victories that had been won on the shoulders of some surprisingly great starting pitching. But that mirage is no longer in tact. Kansas City flirted with danger when deciding to install 36 year-old Chris Young and Kris Medlen, fresh off his second Tommy John surgery, as their fourth and fifth starters in the rotation. Both pitchers have struggled and currently find themselves on the disabled list. Yordano Ventura, who is not elderly, nor has he undergone any surgeries, was supposed to establish himself as a reliable power pitcher. Instead, he has shown himself only to be as volatile with command of the strike zone as he is in temperament. In the past three seasons, his velocity has slowly decreased, his ERA steadily increased, and his strikeout to walk ratio in 2016 is a miserable 26:28. What was once a pitcher who showed remarkable promise now looks more lost than ever. Any hope a fan once had in his developing into a staff ace has since dissipated.
The offense hasn't been much better. Lorenzo Cain, Kendrys Morales, and Alex Gordon - three middle-of-the-order guys, have all gotten off to slow starts. Gordon's has perhaps been most frustrating, after having signed his four-year deal in the offseason. The one bright shining spot in the lineup is Eric Hosmer, whose robust .338 average appears to be a stark anomaly from the rest of the lineup. To make matters worse, Mike Moustakas, first on the team with 7 homeruns and second in OPS (.850), recently went on the 15-day disabled list with a broken thumb. When it rains, it pours.
Lately, as the Royals have gotten good pitching, their offense has sputtered. When the offense has resurrected, the pitching has been lifeless. Whether high-scoring or low-scoring, the Royals are finding ways to lose many of the close games they seemed to have an uncanny knack for winning in past years.
And so I find myself in that dreaded situation I prophesied before the season began. It's not quite so bad as Denny's...more like Chile's. There's nothing inherently wrong with Chile's. Chile's is in fact supremely average, and sometimes it can hit the spot when you either haven't eaten out in a long while or you're perfectly happy to concede away an average dining experience. There is merit to Chile's. But as I referenced in our last correspondence, it's simply hard to find yourself staring at your uber-sugary strawberry lemonade and slightly overcooked burger when your last memory was medium-rare filet and limoncello. Regression is depressing.
But there remain 127 games left in this 2016 baseball saga, and I withhold hope that my team's amnesia will lift soon, and they will remember what it's like to play like champions.
I tried to condense that as best I could because the bigger story by far between our two teams is not the Royals' early ineptitude but the Cubs' sheer and utter dominance. It is not very surprising that they have asserted themselves this early as the best team in baseball, but the way they have done it to the degree of superiority over their opponents has been nothing short of jaw-dropping.
I've watched a fair amount of Cubs baseball this season - in part because the Cubs were the team I cheered for while I resided in Chicago for eight years - my official National League team, and also because my roommate, who you've met, is a huge Cubs fan. I in fact just got done watching their latest victory - a quintessential 8-2 drubbing of the Pirates - an above .500 team that the Cubs have not yet lost to in five games so far this season. Reigning Cy Young winner Jake Arrieta, who we've taken to calling "The Beast", was on the mound. He went 8 innings, struck out 11, gave up 2 earned runs, and saw his ERA balloon to 1.29, leaving me wondering what the hell's wrong with Jake today?? With his performance, he's now given up 3 earned runs or less in 28 straight starts - the longest such streak of a starting pitcher since 1893, neatly wedged in between the Civil War and the First World War. They'll go for the double-sweep tomorrow to make it 6-0.
I say "quintessential" because, in taking into account the many Cubs games I have watched this season, if I could pick a generic score that best represents the 2016 Cubbies, it would be an 8-2 win. I feel as though the Cubs routinely score around 8 runs and nearly as routinely give up less than 3. They almost never lose, and when they win, it's rarely a close game. In fact, in the Cubs' 27 victories thus far, Hector Rondon has only been left with 7 save opportunities, of which he's converted every one. For the baseball-illiterate, a save means closing a game out by 3 runs or less. To only have 7 saves in 27 wins is kind of silly. By comparison, Jeanmar Gomez, the closer for the 21-15 Philadelphia Phillies, has 14 saves.
The Cubs are currently 27-8, just 1 game away from being 20 games above .500. The 2015 American League second wild card team - the Houston Astros - ended the year 10 games above .500. The team with the best record in 2015 - the St. Louis Cardinals - ended the year 100-62, 38 games above .500. The Cubs are already halfway to that mark, and we're barely over a fifth of the way through the season. They are currently on pace to win 125 games and lose 37, which would shatter the 2001 Seattle Mariners' record of 116-46.
But records can be deceiving - especially records this young in the season. Let's take a quick look at the manner in which the Cubs' record has taken shape. The 2015 Cubs went 97-65 for the third best record in Major League Baseball. Throughout the course of the season, they scored 689 runs and allowed 608, for a run differential of +81. The 2016 Cubs have already scored 213 runs, second only to Boston's 219, and the Red Sox have the luxury of playing with the designated hitter in the American League, as well as having played 2 more games than Chicago. Undoubtedly the Cubs would be above that mark were their pitchers not batting every ninth spot in the order. Oh, and they've done all this without Kyle Schwarber, who was lost for the year with torn knee ligaments in a collision with center-fielder Dexter Fowler. Defensively, the Cubs have only allowed 103 runs, which is least in the major leagues. This adds up to an absurd run differential of +110, best in baseball by 52. That's right: in just over a fifth of the year played, the Cubs have eclipsed their run differential of 2015, when they featured the third best record in the league, by 29 runs. For all those who believe that the Cubs have been slightly lucky this far, the Pythagorean Theorem actually states based on their differential that they should be 28-7, a game above where they currently find themselves. If anything, they have been slightly unlucky.
The Cubs are averaging over 6 runs per game - best in the majors. Their average margin of victory is 4.9 runs, which means they're obliterating their opponents. Several of those were also "close" wins due to the Cubs being so far ahead that some of the low-end relievers allowed the opposition back in the game. That's actually not true. They were never in the game...not for one moment.
We all know about the lineup, which has been as advertised as a murderer's row. Fowler, Zobrist, Rizzo, and Bryant have all been tremendous. Even the wiry, baby-faced Addison Russell is beginning to tear the cover off the ball! But what's been most impressive for the 2016 Cubs has undoubtedly been their starting pitching. The Cubs currently have three of the top ten starting pitchers in ERA. That would be Jake Arrieta (1st - 1.27), Jason Hammel (6th - 1.77), and Jon Lester (10th - 1.96). It makes sense that the Cubs are performing this well with elite hitting and elite starting pitching. This has rendered the one possible Achilles heel of the team - middle relief - nearly inconsequential. Opponents only have about one or two innings after the starter is removed to take advantage of a Cubs relief pitcher, and by then they're usually down 4 or more runs. And if by some reason it is in fact a close game, Maddon can turn it over in the ninth to one of the best closers in the game in Hector Rondon. This is not a recipe for success; it's a recipe for complete domination.
In the middle of all of this is Ben Zobrist - the bridge linking my team to yours. Zobrist was a trade deadline acquisition for the Royals last season and proved to be invaluable to our championship run. Time and time again, he would put together a crucial at-bat when we needed it most in the playoffs. I miss that man. The Cubs signed Zobrist in the offseason and now enjoy the fruits of his labor in the middle of their lineup. He got particularly hot in the middle of the Cubs' four-game sweep of the Washington Nationals, in which he went 6-13, with 3 homeruns. I smile when I think about how much fun he's had in the last two years. Think about it. He began 2015 and played much of the season with a struggling Oakland Athletic team. He then was traded to the American League front-runner Kansas City Royals and proceeded to win a championship in a magical postseason run that featured 8 come-from-behind wins. Now he finds himself on another, different sort of magical team, that collectively has the opportunity to set baseball records together. Shortly following Kansas City's championship last season, Zobrist's wife gave birth to a daughter. They named her Blaise Royal. Perhaps their next child will have the pleasure of being named Cub.
I await your unabated enthusiasm...
Dear Drew,
Is this real life? Seriously, somebody pinch me. The first month of the 2016 Cubs season has been nothing short of magical, miraculous, joyful, triumphant, euphoric…I’m running out of words, but you get the picture. Never before in my life have I witnessed a Cubs team like this. I’ve labored through over two decades of Cubs fandom, and I’ve grown very accustomed to Denny’s-like mediocrity, or worse. What the Cubs are doing right now is a once-in-a-generation spectacle…maybe even a once-in-a-century spectacle. You’ve done well in statistically summarizing the Cubs historic dominance. Yes, they are currently on pace to be one of the greatest, if not THE greatest team of all-time. Of course, it’s way too early to assume anything, but the statistical evidence is there. So instead of elaborating any further on the Cubs statistical dominance (although trust me, I’d love to dive into some nerdy peripheral sabermetrics like BABIP, WAR, FIP, XFIP, etc.) I’m going to simply describe to you how this team makes me FEEL. Because, really that’s what ultimately matters about sports fandom. I’m going to give you what Stephen Colbert famously calls “truthiness,” a hyperbolic assertion that comes from the gut rather than pure fact/data. And in doing so, maybe you can live vicariously through my euphoria as your Royals continue their World Series hangover.
The Royals…that’s a good place to start with my truthiness. Are the Cubs this year’s Royals? When I compare the two teams, there seems to be a certain intangible magic at play. Last year’s Royals had an uncanny knack of always coming through in the clutch. You just always had a feeling that they were never truly out of a game…in fact, you almost came to EXPECT them to pull off a miracle. That’s exactly what is happening with this year’s Cubs. Case in point: opening night at Wrigley Field. I was there with my dad, freezing my butt off in freezing wind chills. The atmosphere was October-like, and not just because of the chill. The crowd was buzzing at the beginning, especially when Kyle Schwarber hobbled out of the dugout for his introduction. (more on Schwarber in a moment) But the buzz wore off gradually over the course of the game, as former Royals World Series hero Brandon Finnegan no-hit the Cubs deep into the game. But then the 8th inning…oh my. Addison Russell (seriously, is he REALLY seven years younger than me?!) hit a go-ahead home run when all seemed lost. My dad and I were jumping and screaming like little kids. It was miraculous, but it summed up the magic of this team. The 2016 Cubs are never truly out of it.
So back to Schwarber. Turns out, when you and I saw him and the Cubs on Opening Day in Anaheim, we saw one of his only three games of 2016. Just days later, he blew out his knee in a collision with Dexter Fowler. And when the news came out that he was gone for the year, it was a huge blow to the psyche of every Cubs fan. Schwarber isn’t just a good player; he embodies the joy, excitement, and swagger of this Cubs team. When Schwarber went down, it felt like the good magic had evaporated, and the dreaded black magic of the infamous Curse was working its power again. But again, that’s what’s so incredible about this team. They seemingly haven’t missed Schwarber at all. Sure, the lineup would be more imposing with him. Of course. Would the Cubs have a better record? Maybe. But there’s no disputing it…the Cubs have tremendous depth. (which could be even further tested if Jason Heyward’s injury costs him time on the DL) Kris Bryant’s versatility in the outfield combined with Javy Baez’s emergence has more than compensated for Schwarber’s loss. In previous years, losing a significant player like Schwarber would have sunk the Cubs. But not this year. This year is different.
Personally, this year is different for a fun personal reason: my mom is 100% devoted to this team. (and I hope she’s reading this) I’m very proud of her commitment to this team, because she was a devoted Cubs fan way before I was, back in the days of Ron Santo, Billy Williams, and Fergie Jenkins. Group texting with my parents during nearly every game has become a really fun way to experience this team, especially when my mom gets excited about one of our favorite new players, Ben Zobrist. (who we all affectionately refer to as “Zoby”)
Drew, you are quite correct in pinpointing Zoby as the link between our two teams. Plain and simple, this guy knows how to win, and his patience at the plate is infectious…he brings a winning culture to any team he’s a part of. Ok, only one nerdy stat: from 2009-20012, Ben Zobrist had the best, most robust WAR (wins above replacement) of any position player in baseball. Translation: he was arguably the most valuable non-pitcher in that time period. And I’d argue he still is incredibly valuable, even at the ripe old age of 35. In fact, his power numbers suggest he’s getting even better with age. Drew, I remember you telling me during the offseason that I was going to fall in love with Zoby. I was a little skeptical of the signing at first, because I still (somehow) believed in Starlin Castro. But two months into the season, it’s clear: Zoby is a huge upgrade over Castro.
So there you have it: that just about sums up how I feel about my beloved Cubs at the one-quarter mark of the 2016 season. The Cubs have provided me with joy at a time in my life in which I’ve very much needed it. They have delivered on the pre-season hope and optimism that I wrote about previously. There’s a long way to go, and there will certainly be peaks and valleys ahead. But there’s a growing feeling…in my head AND my heart…that “next year” might finally be here.
With unabated enthusiasm,
Dave
