Reason for optimism: From atop baseball's mountain at last, Cubs fans happily confirm the hopeful words of Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding: The Pacific really is as blue as it was in their dreams.
Reason for pessimism: Even the 1985 Chicago Bears defense was only that good for just one season.
After a winter's reflection, it wasn't the greatest game of my lifetime -- that distinction still belongs to Game 6 of the 2011 World Series -- but last year's season finale was unquestionably the most significant. What will probably be largely forgotten is how close Joe Maddon came to joining Al Capone, Mrs. O'Leary's cow and Steve Bartman as the final member of Chicago's Mount Rushmore of Infamy.
We're here to look forward though, not back, because, to slightly paraphrase the immortal words of the Dallas Cowboys' Duane Thomas, "They're gonna play it again this year, right?"
Not only are they going to play it again this year, but the Cubs are even heavier favorites to return to the Fall Classic than they were a year ago at this time.
That's an easy valuation to defend. In winning 103 games last year, Chicago posted a run differential of plus-252, the best in the majors since the 2001 Seattle Mariners team (plus-300) that won 116 games. The Cubs' plus-252 mark can be adjusted slightly higher for a net minus-8 runs of negative cluster luck, and that equates to a Pythagorean win expectation of 109 wins. That's a nice level to start from before considering 2017 adjustments, especially when you realize the bulk of the Cubs lineup consists of still-peaking stars under 27 years of age. With a win total hurdle this year in the mid-90s, a dozen games below the talent level they displayed last season, where might the regression come from?
Believe it or not, the 2016 offense wasn't as good as I expected it to be, at least relative to the rest of the league. Consider this: Chicago outscored perennial NL Central power St. Louis by 29 runs last year, 13 fewer runs than the year before when the Cardinals won the division. Had you told me that before last season started, I would have been much less confident in my belief that the Cubs would be raising the "W" in November.
The Cubs' true dominance came from the runs allowed side of the ledger and that in itself is always a little bit of concern when it comes to repeating. Just like in football, offensive performance tends to be more consistent from one year to the next, so team pitching dominance tends to regress more than offensive dominance from season to season. Of course in baseball, just like football, there is a third element of team performance that accounts for roughly one-seventh of a team's final run differential: In football it's special teams and in baseball it's defense. The Cubs' team defense last year was a historically insane outlier, breaking the upper bounds of what I thought was possible over 162 games.
How unthinkably great was the Cubs' defense? Let's compare their performance versus that of the two other NL division winners:
The Cubs could have allowed the next 50 balls hit into play to fall for hits, and they still would have allowed nearly 100 fewer runners on base than the Dodgers. In comparison to Washington, subsequent hitters could have gotten 100 straight hits and the Cubs would still have had a defense better than the Nationals to the tune of more than 2 WAR! Here's the truly astounding kicker: Washington and Los Angeles had the third- and fifth-best defenses in the National League, respectively. Against a contender that had a subpar defense, like the New York Mets, Chicago's defense added more than 10 wins worth of value. Suffice it to say, team defensive contributions worth more than a Mike Trout MVP season compared to another playoff team never happen.
It's not likely to happen again this year either, as defensive efficiency has even less correlation year-to-year than pitching or offense. Further, a major contributor to the outfield's stellar defensive performance, Dexter Fowler, departed via free agency. On the mound, there promises to be regression as well. Last year the Cubs got 152 starts, evenly spread for all intents and purposes among their five starters, a measure of health and consistency that virtually never gets repeated from year to year. All of those arms are a year older and unlike the offense, when an extra year of age actually improves projections of players under 28 years of age, Chicago's staff is sneaky old. From last year's rotation, only Kyle Hendricks resides on the happy side of 30.
You might think the bullpen would be a cause for concern with the loss of Aroldis Chapman, but that's a case of shiny-object distraction. There's no disputing the effectiveness of Chapman last year (1.01 ERA), but it came in a limited number of innings. Incredibly, the seven relievers with the most innings pitched last year all return in 2017, consistency that is unheard of in bullpens from year to year.
Simply put, between defensive regression and another year of age on Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta and John Lackey, the Cubs are going to allow a lot more runs than last year. I'm going to confidently play the total wins "under" as I've got the run increase reaching at least 100 and it's quite possible it could approach one run more per game. That's going to lead to a lot of in-season think pieces asking "what's wrong with the Cubs?" In truth, there will be nothing wrong.
Maddon may have badly, nearly infamously, botched bullpen usage in the 2016 postseason, but I'm very confident he'll pilot the Cubs to this year's playoffs in the calm manner of Steve Kerr in Golden State this season. There may be one eye on the standings, but the true goal is to arrive in October with a rested pitching staff and a team ready to provide peak performance and peak excitement for the no longer long-suffering fan base in Wrigleyville.
2017 projection: 92-70 (first, NL Central)
Bet recommendation: Under