Deadspin/Leitch Cubs "preview"

[UMFan83]

Interesting read http://deadspin.com/5498446/chicago-cubs-this-is-the-golden-age?skyline=true&s=i

 

In my mind Leitch, huge Cards fan/Cubs hater, is trying to antagonize his rival's fanbase with this article. Basically his point is, the 2000's was the "golden age" for Cubs fans, and that everything went right for the Cubs this decade and they should have won a World Series during that time, but the cards didn't fall that way. Now they should expect a big decline based on the payroll being maxed out and our core being aging and ready for a slide. He suggests the Cubs only chance this year would be in the rest of the NL Central collapses and and they emulate the 2006 Cardinals team by luckily winning a WS past the peak of that incarnation of the team.

[soapy]

He's exaggerating, of course, but I don't think he's completely off-base. The Cubs are not in the same position they were two years ago and they may have actually gotten worse this off-season. They are relying on aging position players who could decline drastically at any time (and some of whom are injury prone). They are banking on a bounce back season from Soriano, which isn't a given (though likely). Their rotation is likely a step down from last year.

 

How much room they have payroll wise isn't entirely clear, but they certainly seem to be stretched nearly as far as they can go.

 

Like I said, I think he's exaggerating, but I don't think the Cubs are a lock to be post-season contenders either. It will take some good fortune with injuries and a bounce back from Soriano and/or Soto.

[UMFan83]

He's exaggerating, of course, but I don't think he's completely off-base. The Cubs are not in the same position they were two years ago and they may have actually gotten worse this off-season. They are relying on aging position players who could decline drastically at any time (and some of whom are injury prone). They are banking on a bounce back season from Soriano, which isn't a given (though likely). Their rotation is likely a step down from last year.

 

How much room they have payroll wise isn't entirely clear, but they certainly seem to be stretched nearly as far as they can go.

 

Like I said, I think he's exaggerating, but I don't think the Cubs are a lock to be post-season contenders either. It will take some good fortune with injuries and a bounce back from Soriano and/or Soto.

 

Oh yeah, I'm not saying the Cubs are definite contenders, or that they are built for the long term. Those are some of the biggest concerns I share. The most ridiculous part in that article was the part talking about how this is the best decade the Cubs have had, and that we should expect several down years now. I mean there were many many happy moments for the Cubs in the 00's. There were moments of joy, moments of success, moments of swagger. But there were just as many agonizing moments for the Cubs this decade. We saw 5 seperate painful collpases from high expectations this year (twice in reg. season (01 and 04), twice in DS (07,08), and once in LCS (03). We watched our two biggest arch rivals win the World Series only 2-3 years after our biggest shot at winning ended in a historic collapse. We watched the 2 teams who were within 40 years of a similar World Series drought as us win it all and see decades of demons erased. We watched as the ownership finally started to turn into a big market team and spend the money to compete with other large market teams, only to see that money spent without an apparent plan and seeminly in a way that puts us in a significant financial bind to start this season. We saw a celebrated Cub of the late 80s/early 90's, a sort of "less talented Mr. Cub" of a new generation (I know I am reaaaaally stretching here) mutually part ways with the Cubs and win a WS with an expansion team. Speaking of which, the decade saw 7 teams who had either 1) Never been to the World Series before, 2) Hadn't been to a World Series for at least 40 years, or 3) Were an expansion team that had been around for less than 8 years at the start of the decade make the World Series while the Cubs still sat on the sidelines.

 

I am starting to sound like a misery ridden Cubs fan so I'll stop, but it's been anything but a golden decade for the Cubs.

[JimSorgi]

Who cares? It's an article by Will Leitch, so obviously you should've expected it to be horrible.

[UMFan83]

Who cares? It's an article by Will Leitch, so obviously you should've expected it to be horrible.

 

Personally I don't mind his writing. I don't expect anything insiteful, but it usually keeps my attention. That said, as I remarked before, I expected a Will Leitch article about the Chicago Cubs to be horrible, but the article was at least interesting enough to discuss, IMO.

[Sammy Sofa]

I don't think he's all that off. In terms of having their best (and most) chances to win a WS this has been the Cubs' best decade for the better part of a century.

[Guest]

I don't think he's all that off. In terms of having their best (and most) chances to win a WS this has been the Cubs' best decade for the better part of a century.

 

That part is correct. The rest of it, the "window is closing" stuff is pretty much nonsense for a team of the Cubs resources and current farm system.

[Post Count Padder]

I can understand the Will Leitch hatred, but I don't think he's a bad writer and I think this was actually decent. He basically hit the nail on the head.

[rocket]

he wasn't even that brutal in his analysis. he said the cubs got unlucky in the playoffs and didn't blame a stupid curse, and he also went out of his way in the article to dispel the myth that cubs fans at wrigley field aren't knowledgeable.

[imb]

was it will leitch who wrote that awful ebert column or was it the guy before him?

[UMFan83]

I don't think he's all that off. In terms of having their best (and most) chances to win a WS this has been the Cubs' best decade for the better part of a century.

 

But that's not what he said, he called it the golden age of Cubs baseball. Golden age is specifically defined as "a time period when some activity or skill was at its peak". Maybe I'm being too technical but like TT said, my biggest gripe is about the fact that he's assuming that even with the Cubs resources we are headed for a down decade and will wish we were back in the "golden age" of Cardinals and White Sox winning championships while the Cubs suffer epic collapses or whatever.

 

I don't know, Leitch rarely has anything nice to say about the Cubs, and I read this as a passive agressive way to rip on the Cubs.

[Tracer Bullet]

was it will leitch who wrote that awful ebert column or was it the guy before him?

 

leitch wrote one recently about his getting to know ebert and then being a dick to him when he was writing for some website.

[Tracer Bullet]

he wasn't even that brutal in his analysis. he said the cubs got unlucky in the playoffs and didn't blame a stupid curse, and he also went out of his way in the article to dispel the myth that cubs fans at wrigley field aren't knowledgeable.

 

I generally agree. I think it's hard to agree with him that "everything went our way" in the last decade - the Prior disaster and the booted DP ball were killers. But the article wasn't bad.

[UMFan83]

he wasn't even that brutal in his analysis. he said the cubs got unlucky in the playoffs and didn't blame a stupid curse, and he also went out of his way in the article to dispel the myth that cubs fans at wrigley field aren't knowledgeable.

 

I generally agree. I think it's hard to agree with him that "everything went our way" in the last decade - the Prior disaster and the booted DP ball were killers. But the article wasn't bad.

 

WHAT ABOUT BARTMAN!?!?!?!?!!?!!?!?

 

/stereotypical Cub hater who assumes we obsess over that name when the only time we think about him is when fans of other teams bring him up.

 

But seriously, everything going out way doesn't include Lowell's basket HR in G1 of the NLCS, Victor Diaz with 2 outs in the 9th with a 3 run lead, in general the offense collpasing the last week of 2004 season, Derrick Lee's brutal wrist injury coming off a 46 HR monster season that seemed to take 2-3 years to fully recover from, potential HOF pitcher's career derailed with random, sometimes freak, injuries, Ted Lilly's glove throw in the 07 NLDS/Chris Young in the series, Loney's Grand Slam in 08 after just barely getting a piece of a foul tip that would have ended the inning a few pitches before, every member of the Cubs IF making an error in a 2 inning span, etc etc.

 

Some of that is just bad play, some of it is bad breaks, all of it happens to other teams (well almost all of it), but by far all of it amounts to hearing the statement "the Cubs got all the breaks this decade" and laughing at how ridiculous it is.

[jersey cubs fan]

He didn't go out of his way to dispell the Wrigley/Fans myth. You have to go out of your way to try and prove that myth true.

 

But just prior to that discussion he said this, "So far, there's not much evidence the new stewards can enhance, modernize and profitize the old ballpark without losing what makes it great, the way the Boston owners did. You turn fans against Wrigley, you've lost everything."

 

That's just a bunch of stupid by somebody who doesn't know anything about anybody outside of STL and NYC, and he doesn't even know anything about NY teams even though he lives here.

 

Leitch is a guy who subscribes to the nonsensical mythology of baseball being a form of poetry. He's an emo kid who made his mark riding the wave on modern sports journalism and he has completely jumped off that bandwagon and tried to turn himself into the next worthless Rick Reilly clone.

[Sammy Sofa]

I don't think he's all that off. In terms of having their best (and most) chances to win a WS this has been the Cubs' best decade for the better part of a century.

 

But that's not what he said, he called it the golden age of Cubs baseball. Golden age is specifically defined as "a time period when some activity or skill was at its peak". Maybe I'm being too technical but like TT said, my biggest gripe is about the fact that he's assuming that even with the Cubs resources we are headed for a down decade and will wish we were back in the "golden age" of Cardinals and White Sox winning championships while the Cubs suffer epic collapses or whatever.

 

I don't know, Leitch rarely has anything nice to say about the Cubs, and I read this as a passive agressive way to rip on the Cubs.

 

I suppose, but I'd still agree with him that there were far more "good moments" in the last decade than the Cubs had in a long time.

[jersey cubs fan]

I suppose, but I'd still agree with him that there were far more "good moments" in the last decade than the Cubs had in a long time.

 

Yeah, that doesn't really take much to prove. It was a decade where people praised back to back .500 seasons.

[Sammy Sofa]

Hey, it's all relative.

 

To the suck.

[biittner77]

Basically his point is, the 2000's was the "golden age" for Cubs fans, and that everything went right for the Cubs this decade and they should have won a World Series during that time, but the cards didn't fall that way.

 

I can think of a lot of things that didn't go right for the Cubs. You could argue that more things went right for the Cards. Nermind all the fluke productive years and pixie dust, how about Pujols emerging from relative obscurity to become arguably the best player in baseball?

[Andy]

Basically his point is, the 2000's was the "golden age" for Cubs fans, and that everything went right for the Cubs this decade and they should have won a World Series during that time, but the cards didn't fall that way.

 

I can think of a lot of things that didn't go right for the Cubs. You could argue that more things went right for the Cards. Nermind all the fluke productive years and pixie dust, how about Pujols emerging from relative obscurity to become arguably the best player in baseball?

It's not arguable whether he's the best (he is), and the Pujols phenomenon by itself is probably more good fortune than almost any other baseball team has had this decade.

[Four and Twenty]

The eras of 1900-1910 and 1930-1940 make 2000-2010 pale in comparison.

 

This article is terrible and fraught with contradictions. I'll let Dolan fill you in on the rest.

[UMFan83]

Yeah I was just about to say Dolan (yes the fading star in the Cubs blog world as I regrettably put it) did a pretty good write up on this article.

[imb]

was it will leitch who wrote that awful ebert column or was it the guy before him?

 

leitch wrote one recently about his getting to know ebert and then being a dick to him when he was writing for some website.

 

yeah, that's the one. what a dick.

[jersey cubs fan]

This supposed golden era was only the golden era of the Cubs if you subscribe to the ESPN notion that everything that matters happened within the last 25 years.

 

The Cubs were 807-811 in this decade. They had 6 winnings season, sure, but they had more 90 loss seasons than 90 win seasons (and actually more 90 loss seasons than the forgettable 90's). At best the 00's compete with the 80's for best decade. The only thing setting them apart is the 1 extra playoff appearance in the expanded playoff format time frame.

 

I would argue it should have been the golden era of modern Cubs baseball, but opportunity was pissed away by management. But there's really no reason why the 2010's can't be better than the 2000's, and considering they only have to manage to accomplish the mediocre goal of finishing over .500 this decade to surpass this "golden era", it shouldn't be that hard.

[Soul]

No reason they can't do better, but I don't see a compelling reason why they would be better either. It's just something that is up in the air pending decisions that the club makes over the next several years.