I think the frustration is not seeing improvement in the front office. I’m stuck in this Cardinal red hellhole, with a team with far less assets than the Cubs, and who started out the year like complete shit … and now we are basically tied with them.
And the list of players the Cards have brought in to spark great years is impressive. Just like saying your ABC’s or Arenado, Berkman, and Carpenter and on and on …
I think Jed’s vision is to have a team that is made up of a lot of young, home-grown and cost-controlled talent where he can focus on a few spots and get big, impact guys. The problem right now is that as they’re getting closer to that, the last few offseasons, they’ve spent on multiple guys who are good players, but not elite level difference makers. Happ, Seiya, Dansby and Bellinger are proven, above-average performers (Seiya’s health in question), but they’re 105-120 wRC+ guys, which is very different than having a Judge or Soto or Ohtani or Betts or Acuna (pre-injury), etc. The next step to success will be to bring in likely fewer guys in an offseason, but higher impact guys. Prior to 2023 season, the Cubs committed around $300M in spending to FAs, but it was a bunch of guys - Dansby, Jamo, Mancini, Hosmer, Barnhart and some others. With the state of the farm and the talent coming, will be much better to spend $200-400M on 1-2 elite guys to top off.
The Cubs didn’t do enough this year, especially with the lower-half depth on the 40 and impact pen arms, but it is also worth noting that even as a team should expect injuries every season, I’m not sure any team would have planned for Adbert being bad/hurt and also losing Merryweather & Almonte for huge stretches.
It’s definitely frustrating seeing a team seemingly aim for 88-90 wins because while that would be a likely playoff team in either league most years, it’s not leaving much margin for shit to happen….because shit does happen. A couple guys have bad years, you get more injuries than normal or 2 other teams in your division catch lightning in a bottle and suddenly you’re on the fringe. If you put together a roster that looks like 92-94 wins or more in the offseason, then “baseball luck” cracking into expectations is still probably pretty likely to leave you as a solid playoff team.
