My thing is this, almost any competent baseball person could have done what the Cubs did to get a championship. I use to think Theo and the guys around him were special, but it turns out they were not. Then ownership decided to use the Cubs as collateral for buying Chicago city blocks and donating millions of dollars to the worst of humanity, It makes it kind of hard. I love baseball and I love the Cubs, but man is it hard. That's nonsense. If it were that easy there'd be an example of a tanking success story post Cubs/Astros. The Phillies failed spectacularly at the task. The White Sox have failed modestly (they look like they're going to top out as like a 92 win team). None of the Tigers/Mariners/Giants look to be coming out of the other end of their tanks with super teams. The Dodgers being on another level doesn't make what Theo and Co. did not impressive. It's too early to tell about any of those other teams, and note that I wrote competent. The Cubs started their tank in 2012, but they also were not good since 2010.