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Posted March 23

Chicago Cubs 

Season win % over/under = 48.5%

48.5% of 162 games is 78.57. 

The Cubs would need to go 79-83 to cash the overs and 78-84 to cash the unders.

Chicago Cubs

Once upon a time, in a quaint era when winning was in fashion, what the Cubs did this winter would’ve made them the laughing stock of the league. Fresh off a division win, they traded their ace for pennies on the dollar, let half their outfielders and starters walk in free agency, and watched the head of their organization resign rather than stick around for another rebuild. It’s hard to outdo the Bears when it comes to disappointing offseasons, but the Cubs sure gave it their best shot. 

The Cubs stopped short of the nuclear option, retaining Kris Bryant and Javier Baez while looking content to just get worse on the margins. Sure, in some ways what Chicago opted for was just a lesser version of what the Red Sox did last winter, or what Cleveland did this offseason: letting the core of a good team wilt in the name of getting cheaper. But if trading Mookie Betts and Francisco Lindor are baseball felonies, offloading Yu Darvish is more akin to a misdemeanor, albeit one that should come with a little jail time. 

On paper, Cubs are no longer one of the league’s best teams, but nor are they a laughing stock. They’re merely one more team happy to join baseball’s murky middle, another C+ student in a league and division increasingly full of them. Cubs fans are awfully used to living through the extremes at this point, but it looks like they’ll be familiarizing themselves with a new type of team for a while: an utterly mediocre one. Say what you will about Theo Epstein, but the man knows when to get out of dodge. 

Chicago’s lineup:

The Cubs finished 20th in the majors in runs scored last season, and while they lost a few notable contributors from the squad that produced said result, the changes seem mostly cosmetic. The most notable absence comes in Kyle Schwarber, who has finally joined an A.L. team so he can DH full ti … wait, what’s that? Another N.L. squad is going to let Schwarber play in the outfield? Andre Maginot thinks that’s a bad defensive plan. Anyway, new head honcho Jed Hoyer replaced Chicago’s favorite sentient thumb with Dodgers castoff Joc Pederson. Given that Pederson has actually out-performed Schwarber in Deserved Runs Created (DRC+) two out of the past three seasons and is an average-ish defender, one could argue he’s an upgrade. 

The other subtractions the Cubs saw from their lineup are largely trivial. Albert Almora is now free to answer a long-standing question from Mets fans, “what if Juan Lagares had been drafted in the first round?” Jose Martinez joined him in New York but is likely to miss most of the season following a knee injury. Jason Kipnis is fighting for the Nick Markakis Memorial Veteran Leadership Award in Atlanta. Victor Caratani was shipped to San Diego in the Darvish deal, but Willson Contreras doesn’t need a noteworthy caddy. Otherwise, Hoyer kept the band together, and you can see why. Anthon Rizzo, Ian Happ, Contreras, and Jason Heyward were all good last year. Baez and Bryant were not, but given their track records, they deserve the benefit of the doubt. There are much better plans at second base than “ehhh, David Bote and Nico Hoerner?,” but there are worse ones as well. 

This group might be tough to watch defensively—especially in the outfield, unless we’re about to see a lot of Jake Marisnick—but it would not be surprising to watch them finish as a top-15 offense. That is, unless they so manage to alienate Bryant that they’ve gotta trade him for two relievers and a C prospect by June. Make no mistake about it: that seems very much in play. 

Starters

The Cubs may have done enough in free agency to paper over their offensive losses, but the rotation could be a genuine tire fire. With Darvish in San Diego, Jose Quintana in Los Angeles, Tyler Chatwood in Toronto (err, Dunedin), and Jon Lester in D.C., this group is shallower than a kiddie pool. Kyle Hendricks is now the frontman, and while he’s performed as such before advanced metrics suggest he’s in the middle of a three-year slide, despite surface stats that look largely unchanged. He’s certainly not the problem here, but he may be less of a solution than you’d think. 

Behind Hendricks, the Cubs have basically gone Full Angels and are pretending the problem doesn’t exist. They re-signed Jake Arrietta. They got Zach Davies back from the Padres in the Darvish trade, and while he may be coming off his second-best season, well, there’s a reason he spells it Zach (without a K). Adbert Alzolay is still technically a prospect, and while he was quite good in 21 innings last year, he’s still got just 10 career starts to his name. Then we’re on to Alec Mills, who appears to be Plan A for the No. 5 spot despite posting an ERA and DRC+ of 5-plus last year. Hoyer is also yet the latest person to talk himself into The Shelby Miller Experience. We’ve all been there, Jed. You’ve just got to learn to let go. 

There’s some upside here: maybe Davies really has turned a corner, or Alzolay blossoms, or one of Arrieta or Trevor Williams finds a time machine. Perhaps top prospect Brailyn Marquez makes a bigger 2021 impact than most think he’s capable of. But unless several of those individually unlikely things all happen at once, this could easily be a bottom-10 starting group. 

Bullpen

Don’t look to the bullpen to save the day or many games: it’s only marginally deeper than the rotation. Chicago’s closer is still the Ghost of Craig Kimbrel, who’s now mercifully entering the walk year of what feels like a 13-year contract with the Cubs. Kimbrel took more time searching for delivery than a 13-year-old with a stolen PS5, but he finally sort of found it last season, posting a 3.77 xERA despite an unseemly ERA. He is no longer dominant or perhaps even good, but there’s some hope he can be serviceable once more. 

Beyond Kimbrel, the only returning Cubs relievers who pitched semi-well last season are Ryan Tepera and Rowan Wick. To support those two, Hoyer grabbed a hodgepodge of relievers coming off down years. Jonathan Holder spent the last two seasons getting shelled in New York. Brandon Workman is coming off the worst Philly cameo since the Go Birds lady. Former lefty D-backs prospect Josh Osich has been replaced by former lefty D-backs prospect Andrew Chafin. Kohl Stewart was signed as a sort of threat to this organization’s pitching prospects, one assumes. Duane Underwood Jr. is here too, but to what end? It’s simply not a good group.

Cubs over or under 48.5%?

Emerging from a disappointing offseason, entering a disappointing era, the Cubs are a team unstuck in time. The Yu Darvish trade, an unquestionable capitulation to financial interests, was a major blow to the team’s championship hopes, and they parted with other longtime favorites without securing upgraded replacements. Age and failure have worn away at the limitless energy and invincibility that once served as the hallmark of an almost-dynasty.

In 2019, the Cubs were projected to be in the .500 range, fresh off their four 90+ win seasons. Theo Epstein mocked the system in a press conference, fans railed against it daily on social media. The Cubs won 84. The projection wasn’t right, though, at least not totally; it had projected the aging pitching staff to break down, and though Jon Lester and Jose Quintana showed their age, it held up fairly well. Instead, what did go wrong was even worse for the organization: Its two youngest players, Addison Russell and Albert Almora, failed to keep the wheel spinning. 

The task of having to figure out who’ll top the NL Central is not an easy one, as it seems as though every team save the Pirates has a ceiling of 90 wins and a floor of 90 losses. That certainly appears to be the case for the Cubs, who have the hitting talent to beat up anyone on a good day and the pitching talent to lose to a Triple-A squad. The risk to go over is too great. A lot could go wrong this year and not a lot can go right therefore the recommendation is under. It’s a heavy lean to the under but there are other wagers we prefer more. (No bets, but if you must --- UNDER).

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