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The last time the Cubs tore everything down and rebuilt, they eventually built a juggernaut. Of course, it helped that their apotheosis coincided with a nadir for the Cardinals, but no one in the NL Central had any chance of stopping the 2015-18 Cubs from claiming at least a few playoff appearances. As has been pointed out many times before, the Cubs are the only team in their division who do not receive competitive-balance picks in the draft each year. That's because they so dwarf the rest of the division in spending power and opportunity that the others need those picks just to keep up with the Cubs--when the Cubs are being run well.
Alas, lately, the Cubs are not being run well. They're building something, but it doesn't look like another juggernaut, and this time, they could face stiffer competition from the rest of the division, even as they get back to contention. The Reds called up Elly De La Cruz this week, part of a scintillating set of prospect promotions. Cincinnati is also a team on a hot streak, having pulled two and a half games ahead of the Cubs in the standings and beating some good teams to get there.
Meanwhile, though the red flags are still waving on either side of the Jolly Roger, the Pirates are staying afloat. They've yet to make the same kind of move the Reds did, but their farm system is just as deep as those of the Reds and Cubs, and their success this year (even if it doesn't last) will only speed up their surge back toward the top of the table. They also pick first in next month's draft, and will probably walk away from that with elite LSU outfield prospect Dylan Crews--not a bad facsimile of Kris Bryant, a decade later.
The Reds and Pirates are, based on market size and recent history, supposed to be the easy teams for the Cubs to overwhelm and outpace. They're the lesser lights of the NL Central. If even they currently have an edge, and certainly if they're both being assembled intelligently and with ample young talent, then there could be big trouble ahead.
At the moment, I would rank the outlooks for the five teams who make up the NL Central over the next five years (2024-28) as follows:
- Brewers
- Cardinals
- Reds
- Cubs
- Pirates
Those are, obviously, far from authoritative or objective rankings. There's a great deal of guesswork involved--not only in terms of which team's stars might age best or whose prospects might matriculate to the majors most successfully, but at which teams will spend aggressively in free agency or make important personnel moves.
Still, the above feels right to me. The Brewers clearly have the best team in the division for 2023, and hardly any of that roster is gone after this year. Even if they're unable to extend any of Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Willy Adames, they will have the options of retaining them to fuel their 2024 run or trading one or more of them to add to their stockpile of young talent--a collection that already includes one of the three best prospects in baseball, in Jackson Chourio, and a pilfered star in catcher William Contreras.
Milwaukee will never spend even an above-average amount of money in a given year, but when they're competitive, they will outspend their market size. Meanwhile, their front office is as sharp and frugal as any small-market outfit this side of the Rays. The only serious threat I see to their staying power is the possibility that Craig Counsell will leave after this season, when his contract ends.
However ugly things have gotten for the Cardinals in 2023, they're still the Cardinals. Even in this state of relative chaos and confusion, they have a more consistent identity and set of processes than the Cubs have ever had. Even coming into this season, I was dubious of their corner-infield core, because it was always possible that Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt would age suddenly and poorly, together. That looks like it might be happening. The Willson Contreras contract, like several recent almost-big forays into free agency by John Mozeliak, was questionable the moment it was signed, and is going badly.
Yet, the Cardinals have a bevy of young players, and they'll have a rare opportunity this year to let the kids about whom they want the most information play for a while. Then, they'll land their highest draft pick of this century in 2024. Over the winter, they're going to have a ton of money to spend, and the Cardinals (whatever MLB's calculations of market size might say) have the wherewithal to really make a splash when the situation calls for it.
No team in the division should scare Cubs fans more than the Reds, though--not because they have a better outlook than the Cubs, but because they have a better outlook than the Cubs and they're the Reds. A tiny-market team whose owners are as bungling and penurious as Milwaukee's Mark Attanasio is patient and committed, the Fightin' Castellinis should be almost impervious to the knocking, doorbell-ringing, and battering rams of opportunity. Instead, they seem to be seizing the moment.
Over the last two years, the Reds have run the same set of plays the Cubs have, minus the impactful free-agent additions. They've traded every piece of what was a quasi-competitive core, save the injured and massively expensive Joey Votto, and they've gotten back a set of stellar prospects in the deals. Their aggressiveness on the trade market has netted them the core of a new contending team, and if they splurge even on one or two guys to improve their depth and balance out the risk profile of a team as young as their current roster, look out. Somehow, they've beaten the Cubs at their own game, without even playing part of it.
Even the Pirates are dangerous, as their first 64 games of this season illustrate. Their farm system, like that of the Cubs, leans a bit more toward depth than toward star power, and the questions even about key current contributors to the big-league team are a little more pressing than are the similar ones about the Brewers or Cubs. They're only going to get better over the next few years, though.
How much better is the real question, and why I ranked them last. I'm still deeply skeptical about their ownership, and even about the degree to which they're caught up to the rest of the league in terms of some key aspects of scouting and player development. That said, walk through this division, and it's easy to see how it could go from the second-weakest in MLB to one of the strongest over the next two or three years. The Cubs have their work cut out for them.
There's still a way for the Cubs to become the preeminent team in this division, of course. It could even happen quickly, and they could form the dynasty that didn't quite come together under Theo Epstein before being disassembled by Jed Hoyer. It's just that doing so would be extremely expensive, based on what they have and the commitments they've already made, and that it will also be difficult, both because of the inherent difficulty of turning a good farm system into a good team and because of the ascendancy of most of the rest of their rivals.
Right now, it's hard to trust that Tom Ricketts will consistently shell out the money required to thread that needle. It's hard to feel sure that Hoyer knows how to spend the resources correctly even if he gets them. It's hard to believe David Ross will make whatever roster Hoyer does put together into the best version of itself. There's just very little in which a Cubs fan can have great confidence right now. Two months ago, Reds fans felt the same way. Right now, Cardinals fans do. Still, there's an obduracy to the Cubs' struggles that feels awfully daunting, given the status of the rest of this group.
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