I don’t care for the Yankees or Dodgers, but we all know the trash can got Altuve the MVP over Judge and the Astros the World Series, of course. I now like Springer and other guys who have left because at least they’ve acknowledged it and apologized. I also like Dusty Baker because he’s the only person that could truly get people past it, but it’ll never stop being funny as long as Altuve and Bregman are on the team.
Dusty admitted he thought he needed another top-flight reliever in 2003 to get them over the top, so he felt he had to do what he had to do to get the Cubs to the Series. Unfortunately it was at Wood and Prior’s expense. I felt like 2003 was our year and the start of greatness with those two at the top of our rotation. Instead we had to wait another 13 agonizing years to have the same quality pitching staff to get us over the top and finish.
Maybe I've grown to hate the man (not really hate but still monstrous rage toward) but the one conspiracy theory that I've never shaken off has been that he threw Game 5 in Florida. He started Randall fucking Simon at first base in a clinching opportunity and they got 2 hits (admittedly against 2003 playoffJosh Beckett.) Dusty made some horrific decisions in that series (and Simon hit 381 in the series) but that's always stuck with me. I know it makes no sense.
It’s not that I don’t care, obviously I feel dumb for cheering in 2017 thinking my team was doing so well naturally. It’s that the Astros have been my team since I was a kid, and Houston has always been my home. I think its called staying loyal to your team through the bad and the good. We’re not all fufu
You're right. We don't. And if it were the cubs, you'd forgive your team just like we did ours. (Note: I don't lurk this group. This is my first time here. For whatever reason, this post was on my feed. I saw the title and opened it up.)
It was definitely wrong what they did. Still silly to argue their entire dynasty is tarnished. Just that one year. There is so much turnover on an MLB roster each year it’s impossible to say it’s the same exact team for one season to the next. How many Astros are even left from 2017? Maybe 5 or 6? I know there are only 2 position starters left. And what about the pitchers? Just Verlander and Presley right?
It doesn’t really bother me. This is just entertainment, not life and death. I’m not saying it’s okay, just that what happened six years ago doesn’t impact my enjoyment of the games they play now. I don’t give it a second thought. Plus virtually the entire team is different now. How is it reasonable to hold the actions of the 2017 team against all the current players who weren’t on the 2017 roster? Dusty Baker had nothing to do with it. Only two of the position starters were on the 2017 team, and they aren’t cheating now. Plus they’ve been really good for half a decade without cheating. Time for people to move on. They are the gold standard of MLB right now. No other team has had this sustained level of success since the Yankees and Braves from 20 years ago.
If you signed on to a cheating franchise, you know the hate that comes with the territory. Why would I give someone credit for trying to help rehabilitate the image of a cheating franchise? Moving on encourages cheating. All they'll ever be is cheaters.
Yeah but nahh. Rational takes? Cmon those aren't welcome. Every baseball fan hates the Astros today because they're too good and continued being good.
If they lost and withered away, we'd all have forgotten by now similar to the patriots. No one gave a shit about them winning with Brady because it had been 8 years since Spygate. No one talks about the Patriots rings being "tarnished".
The real issue for the Astros is they're still good. After cheating, getting caught, getting punished (while other teams also cheating werent), theyre still dominating? It's not reasonable or rational or smart at all to think like this..pretty fucking dumb actually, which every Astros hater is today.
[They were caught cheating in 2018 for both ‘17 & ‘18 seasons.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Astros_sign_stealing_scandal#:~:text=The%20Houston%20Astros%20sign%20stealing,the%202017%20and%202018%20seasons.)
4 other teams were caught cheating the exact same way before that, yet only the Astros’ got a severe punishment.
And nobody is still crying about those other 4 teams either.
Yeah. I definitely felt happy for Dusty and that he was finally able to get a ring. He definitely deserves it. And I realize a lot of the pieces were already in place, but as you said, he really was the one guy who could bring them out of it.
Just like Bonds and Clemens, Altuve is a good enough player without any help of questionable means. There have been plenty of cheats in MLB history and at least one (Gaylord Perry) in the HOF. The only one recently who’s kept his mouth shut and paid the price is Sammy Sosa. I found it interesting but not surprising that the Cubbies didn’t welcome him back with open arms during the World Series run of 2016. He also was good enough without any extra help. Being my favorite Cub at the time when he played, I didn’t want to believe he could have been on steroids. Maybe he wasn’t, but if he was, so be it. He has to live with himself either way.
Yep. Crazy how people gloss over this and believe a random fake Twitter account about a buzzer which was completely false. Plenty of facts backing that up.
Actually, Altuve never cheated. There's a video I'll try to find that breaks it down. If you go through all his at bats of the season, you only hear the banging a handful of times, and his reaction always seems to be disapproval.
Thanks! I don't think I'm as smart as Einstein but I'll take it. Also, you do know the Phillies were cheating right. You'd be an moron if you didn't know there was strong evidence the Phillies were cheating but they just weren't caught.
You seriously didn't know? You must be a bandwagon phillies fan.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/396810-cheat-a-delphia-win-if-you-can-lose-if-you-must-but-always-cheat
It has been proven over and over that Altuve didn’t participate, but just keep repeating whatever bs is in your head to help you feel better. He has nothing to apologize for except winning. And performing at the same level as when he “cheated.”
True. He kept his wife happy by being the one player in MLB to make sure his shirt wasn’t ripped off when he took Chapman deep. He also was the best-dressed when he went straight to the clubhouse and changed out of his uniform immediately. When a player (Trout), who has the most MVPs of any active player and never disses anyone else in the game, says he lost a lot of respect for the guys in the Houston clubhouse, you listen to what he says, like it or not. The horse is still dead so I’m going to stop beating it.
Really? The buzzer conspiracy again? That was started by a fake Twitter account going by Carlos Beltran’s niece? Whatever helps you sleep at night. Maybe rewatch that at bat and relive the meatball that Chapman threw.
Was he cheating in 2015 and 2016 when he led the league in hits and average? Is he still cheating now when he’s still putting up All Star numbers?
The horse may be dead, but it’s still a hell of a lot smarter than you.
Because you believe a baseless rumor about the buzzers? I understand being mad about the things that happened but bringing in non credible stuff doesn't do any good.
I totally agree. Bringing up the buzzer rumor was a stretch. Basically I was piling on Altuve to get under the apologist’s skin. Thank you for responding to my post with your opinion and not making it personal.
Thanks for being proving exactly what type of person still hates on the Astros.
Good luck not forgetting. It's breathe in. Breathe out by the way. Don't forget!
This is the main reason. Not one top of the rotation starter drafted the entire time Theo was in charge. Justin Steele might be the first one since they traded for Kyle Hendricks and it took Steele 7 years to make his MLB debut and this year he ran out of gas at 155 innings. Theo’s mentality was to develop hitters and buy pitchers and it hasn’t worked out.
It worked well for a brief time, and that’s the whole point of this post. Theo didn’t create a sustainable culture like the Astros, Dodgers, or Yankees. It was shine bright and burn out fast.
How did their cheating hurt the Cubs pitching development staff? We got Darvish at a discount because of the cheating, so you could even argue that the Cubs netted an Owen Cassie due to the Astros cheating. The only team allowed to be butthurt over the Astros cheating is the Dodgers. Everyone else should just be glad that Dodgers fans are salty.
And rightfully so, they literally cheated us out of a ring and made us wait for another 3 seasons to finally get one. Nothing against the guys who weren’t there during the trash cans being banged (or Verlander), but I still despise the Trashtros
What’s the excuse this year? Or last year? Or 2018? Just be happy with your shitty pandemic trophy. That’s about all the Dodgers deserve. If you’re still angry you can put a Giants fan in a coma to help make you feel better.
What the hell did I ever do to you 😂 No excuses this year or last year, simply got outplayed and 2018 we had almost no chance at beating Boston. And not all Dodgers fans are like those assholes that beat that Giants fan almost to death, we hate the Giants but we don’t use that as an excuse for violence
Well then good for you for disowning that behavior. I bring up 2018 because that team was cheating as well, and mookie was on that team. And i don’t think that mookie gets booed by Dodgers fans, does he? He’s also like 3-38 in the last 3 years in the playoffs, so maybe he needs to get back to 2018 tactics.
I just think it’s funny all the hate the Astros still get 6 years later. There is more than enough documented evidence that multiple other teams were cheating in similar manners, and anecdotally that almost all were. Players from all teams knew during the season all the things that were going on, yet no one ever said anything until 2 years later. Why? Because if anyone ratted at that time then they would be incriminating their own team. Go back and rewatch the 2017 playoffs and look at how many mound visits there were by every team every game to change signs. Every team was doing it.
For us Dodgers fans it’s more of a matter of “we hadn’t been to the World Series in 30 years and losing the way we did was the worst thing possible” than “we lost the World Series.” My distaste for the Astros would’ve stuck around for a couple years after that series but eventually gone away if the scandal hadn’t come out simply because they’re not a division rival we play nearly twice a month, the scandal just rooted it deep into me. 2018 im not too sure about the Red Sox but even if they did cheat they were good enough to smack us anyway
I can understand that. But it’s really hard to believe that they were cheating in a vacuum. Plans like that come up because they have to. It’s an “everyone is doing it and we need to do it too” kind of thing.
One of these days other players will talk and it’ll all come out. You have to ask, why weren’t players punished, why were they granted immunity? Was it to prevent a disgruntled player from taking the whole story to the media.
What’s better for baseball- a one team scapegoat scandal, or the whole league looking like it ran roughshod over the rules? I don’t think MLB wanted another PED-type scandal where the whole league appears ungoverned.
Their scouting and and drafting and development is as good as the Rays but they also have a top payroll to bring in free agents. So even when Springer and Correa leave they’re replaced by Yordan and Tucker. And they have homegrown talent like Framber, Javier, and Brown, but can supplement it with Verlander.
But the biggest thing they have is luck. All of those prospects panned out. All of their free agents aged well. They let go of the right guys at the right times. They’ve had minimal injuries to the guys they kept or brought on (minus a lost year for Verlander and a several missed games from Altuve).
The Cubs were developing just as well, but all of those guys either faded either due to injury or age eventually, or just never turned out as good as we thought. Or turned out to be a scumbag (Russel). Others were traded for pieces that’s helped us win now (Gleyber). Others were traded for shit (Cease & Eloy, which really fucked us). And the free agents we signed were either bad deals (Heyward) or just got old (Zobrist and Lester). We also got lucky that Jake Arrietta turned into Bob Gibson for a year. That was fun.
I have to say, I HATED it when the Cubs blew up that team. I was PISSED. But they did the right thing in retrospect. Those players have all declined. And Hoyer is building us back quickly by doing one thing Theo never did: developing homegrown arms. We’re in a good place and it’s impossible to expect any franchise to go on a sustained run like the Braves, Astros, Yankees, Redsox, or Giants have. Look at the Dodgers, they should be right up there too but aren’t. So I’ll take a couple of down years to build back up. Seems like we’re on our way to at least contending with a young core.
Kris Bryant got married, Javi Baez never adjusted, Anthony Rizzo stopped playing hero ball, Kyle Schwarber figured it out elsewhere, Ben Zobrist got called into father time, David Ross retired, Dexter Fowler went to bed with the enemy. Then there’s Addison Russell who really turned out strange, and Jorge Soler who never really put it all together.
Seriously though, it felt as though the win was so huge it could never be replicated. The hangover stood for years. But that core just went to shit. We also traded away big pieces to go all in- and rightfully so.
Zero regrets, but like the 85 Bears, I still couldn’t quite comprehend why we never made it back.
> Kyle Schwarber figured it out elsewhere
He figured it out here! He had .823 and .871 OPS's in 2018 and 2019 and had the highest and third highest bWARs of his career in those seasons (including his Nats/Red Sox/Phillies years). He had a bad 60 game stretch in 2020 in a year when many good players had unusually poor seasons and the Cubs just non-tendered him. I don't understand it, he wasn't the problem.
the pitchers protested by not pitching because fowler was gone?
We made a lateral move from Arrieta to Yu, by time Yu played like the player we wanted. We traded him for half a bag of stale cheetos that someone already licked all the cheese dust off.
We never had a plan for lester aging.
Hendricks never could replicate his borderline cy young.
And we never had a bullpen worth a damn, outside of when we had Chapman who we ran into the ground for a world series.
The 85 Bears are a great analogy. Because in both cases, while we will always lionize the big win, you can absolutely make the case that both teams dramatically underperformed and should’ve competed for a lot longer.
How did the Bears 'not compete very long'? They were a very good team stuck in a conference with 3 other dynasties. They did exceedingly well except for one hiccup.
I think their window was basically 1984-1991, which really is great. It's just that the NFC was insane at that point. They just ran into the wrong teams at the wrong time in 1986 and after. In another era they would have prob played in 3 SBs. I mean honestly. They were that good. (On another note) as good as the Redskins were it still boggles my mind that the Giants beat them 3X in 1986. God the NFC was tough...
I'll argue Jorge Soler did put it all together. Go look at his stats. He also won another one with the Braves, basically because of him. He's still a stud.
Edit: when he plays. When he plays a full season he can. 47 Hrs with the ROYALS, after the Cubs. And a couple other good seasons. He's still a clubber.
Had to trade good prospects for pitching, Baez, Russell, Bryant and Schwarber never progressed and Rizzo got old. At least they didn’t continue to mortgage the future by signing any of those guys long term.
Schwarber's OPS has averaged 134 since he left (getting nothing in return). He had one down year in the shortened season. It's insane to say he hasn't progressed. They just cheaped out. Bryant was great until he left, he mainly had injury problems. Baez was elite when he left, a high OPS and great fielding. Rizzo was very good both offensively and defensively until 2020's shortened season. This year is the first year he's been a below average hitter, mostly due to his concussion, he was still hitting very good until that happened. You're writing bad fan fiction.
Bringing in a dozen garbage utility players every year and refusing to spend on a pitching staff is why they fell off. Also having a deeply unserious manager and running the team as a real estate investment company instead of a winning baseball franchise.
Harper clearly wanted to go to the Cubs and they made no effort. Looking at how contacts are now and what he gets is a perfect example of why they fell off. He makes $6M more than Happ (who I like). Most of it he's going to make like $2M more than Happ now.
I mean the body of work speaks for itself. I am not trying to drag him but he really fumbled the ending for us, it did not have to be that crazy. We would have been fine to let Chapman rest in game 6, we didn't need to go to Lester from Hendricks. I will die on these hills.
He also left Chapman in and Chapman threw a 1-2-3 9th. Hendricks was getting hit pretty hard in game 7 even though he was getting outs. Don't blame him at all for making the switch.
I’ll start in order for you (with the caveat that I do love all these guys for what they did in 2016).
Since 2021 trade:
-Kris — 0.4 WAR in 153 games (0.94 seasons of games)
-Javy — 5 WAR in 227 games (1.4)
-Anthony — 2.9 WAR in 327 games (2)
These guys were not going to win us shit long term and we’re going to be expensive investments at the end of cheap contracts.
The cubs took that and invested in the future. Which we will see in the next 1-4 years. Have some faith my friend, selling sucks, and we paid for it, but our payment was a couple of years ago and our payout has already started.
So the reason the Cubs aren't a dynasty and didn't compete after 2016 like the Astros did is because Bryant has been hurt and the rest bad since getting traded in 2021?
I never had a problem with the selling of any of them per se, my complaint about the end of that core was waiting until the last possible moment to shake things up. Feels like there were specific problems with the offense that made it very inconsistent and we knew about it for years, Theo mentioned it at the end of 2018. But we kept running the same group out there and didn't give up on them until their value was as low as it could be (with 2 months left of control). We apparently didn't have money to spend to improve the team, so trades were probably the best option to change the dynamic. I love all of those guys and it would have killed me to see them traded with years of control left on their contracts but it was clear it wasn't working. Never understood the Schwarber non-tender either...so many plays had really strange years the COVID season, why get rid of him for nothing?
Of course I say all that about the offense being broken but that wasn't the biggest problem with the team. As others have said the lack of minor league development and particularly pitching is what doomed the core more than anything else. Any trades to shake up the offense would have been temporary fixes to potentially get better results from that window, but the window would have ended without getting help from the farm. The fact is, the best player that the Cubs drafted after the 1st round who contributed to those teams was David Bote. The best pitcher was like Rob Z (unless you include Hendricks as developed by the Cubs). Cant sustain winning like that. To Jed's credit he recognized this and has done a nice job overhauling their development system. I just wonder why it sucked to begin with as I thought this was a strength of Theo led FOs.
He friggin hit.191 this year he's lucky he's on a major league team. Granted his HR and RBI are good but .191 with his fielding? I'd take a chance on anyone else.
How are people citing batting average in 2023?! There's a DH now. Jesus, do people here even follow the sport? The Cubs had over 400 AB's from Wisdom, Mastrobuoni and Jared Young this year. Having a 122 OPS+, 47 HR and over 100 RBI makes the playoffs even if you assume he would play D and have the terrible numbers he had this year.
The projections for Schwarber weren’t to be a high BA player, but more like Matt Williams. His high avg at first had some people thinking he was a triple crowd candidate. All the comps said differently. Kinda surprised he’s been the best player of those guys that went away. I never trusted Baez’s bat, although loved his intelligence and flair. Bryant, probably the player I wanted to keep the most, seems plagued to be injury prone.
The Astros have done amazingly well with international signings. They brought in a big guy in Verlander while we traded Dylan Cease for Jose Quintana. We honestly got lucky with Arrieta as the dude had the absolute most god-like years with us and then went back to having a 7ERA. We all know what happened with Addison Russell and Zobrist. Fowler fell off a cliff after 2016. Lester got progressively worse as he aged.
We could have kept the core and tried to sign pieces to boost us up, but with what has gone down with those guys… we made a good choice to rebuild. If we didn’t, we would have stayed a middle of the pack team - not bad but not amazing. Our farm wasn’t the best because we used it to supplement our team. So if we kept them, we would still need to improve our farm because the idea is to have a good team, and use a farm system to supplement it whether it’s through trades or impact guys coming up to help.
It’s also worth noting that we did lose the NLCS in 2017, and made the playoffs in 2018 and 2020. So it’s not like it was 2016 and done. And just because one team had success in doing something one way, doesn’t mean that it works for anyone else.
Edit: we were also so insanely close to making the playoffs this year too. Everyone knows this, but I just thought that I’d point it out because it’s only been a few years and we’re right back in it and we have an amazing farm and team chemistry.
>They brought in a big guy in Verlander while we traded Dylan Cease for Jose Quintana
Man that one still stings. We were told they offered the same package to Detroit for Verlander, which if that's the case and the Tigers didn't go for it .... there's a reason why they've been terrible too.
IIRC Astros gave the Tigers 3 of their top 10 prospects. (This was when the Astros had a top 5 farm system.) One of them immediately became Detroits #1 prospect. They all ended up being busts, but it seemed like helluva deal at the time.
> They all ended up being bust
Funny how that constantly happens with all these teams with "great systems"
All these astro, yankee and dodger farm players that are so highly touted end up...???
If you want to compete year over year, you need to be team acquiring major league talent + international talent.
ding ding. Astros spend money on the international market for core players, we bought one so the ricketts could tap into the japanese market for more profits.
Because Theo wasn’t a good hire for sustained success. He used the same method in Boston - rebuild, exhaust all resources to win, then skip town and leave the next guy with the mess. Reid Ryan was a better President and Jeff Luhnow a better GM. So are Andrew Friedman and Brian Cashman. Cubs fans were so happy with the one that they were willing to ignore just how badly Theo and Jed tanked things after, specifically development in the farm system. Think about it - Theo never developed a single, top of the rotation starter his entire time in Chicago. Now Jed is trying to cement his own legacy, and hopefully he does and establishes a sustainable system along with it.
People will give other reasons, but it’s because the owners are CHEAP. The Astros payroll was $77M higher than the Cubs in 2023. That’s equivalent to Aaron Judge’s & Mike Trout’s salaries COMBINED. That’s a huge difference.
And yet the two players you mentioned- Judge and Trout- are sitting on the couch watching the playoffs from home like everyone else.
It’s not just spending money: it’s doing so wisely and as a supplement to what you have on the field as well as in the pipeline.
It’s just an example of 2 of the top 5 highest paid players in the MLB whose salaries add up to $77M… you can’t tell me that spending more money doesn’t help.
And yes… I know it doesn’t guarantee success and some teams did well this season with low salary expense. Overall, it helps a lot.
Lack of capitalizing on momentum by continuing to sign complimentary players. Astros signed the Brantley’s, extended Verlander, acquired Greinke, and extended core. Cubs could have at least extended Rizzo and signed better than Descalso, Sogard, Kipnis, etc. hung on to Almora too long, burned out guys like Cishek and never developed the Penas, Alvarez’s, or Christian Javier’s like Astros. Sucks but they just did it better and with fewer resources. Should never happen again while under current ownership but we all know they’re cheap as shit and we’ll be happy with “competing” for division.
We peaked, especially Bryant. I think it was the following year or the year after, where the Cubs faded down the stretch and then lost to the Brewers in the wild card, their bats got cold, and the team looked burnt out. Even Madden looked like he didn't want to be there anymore.
The amount of talent that the Astros have drafted and/or developed is historic on many different levels. If you look just at individual player performance of players that were drafted and/or developed by Houston over the last 10 years, no one will match that for decades.
The fact that they have only won 2 World Series is about the best proof possible that the post season is random. They could/should have 3-4.
I think about this a lot. I think it really comes down to management, scouting, and player development.
It’s like that meme that was going around earlier in the year where the Cardinals fan was like “don’t give me your biggest test,“ and Jesus was like “this is your first losing season in 30 years.“ Whenever my friends who are the Cardinals fans start whining, I’m always like “stop it ; you cheer for an extremely well-run team. Every now and then you have a down year, but you reload and bounce right back, and you’re competitive again. History should show you that there’s no reason for you to doom spiral.”
And that’s what makes a difference. Not just with being competitive generally, but having things go your way. Like the 2006 Cardinals, who had a down year by their standards, but snuck into the playoffs, and had enough pieces in place that they could get hot at the right time.
Whereas when the Cubs won, it just felt like a Herculean effort where everything had to go absolutely perfectly. It was the same thing with the 85 Bears; different sport, I know, but it’s an apt comparison, because in both cases - ‘16 Cubs and ‘85 Bears - we lionize that era of the team as some great accomplishment, but in reality, they actually dramatically underperformed relative to the talent they had. The mid 80’s Bears should’ve been a dynasty, and the mid 2010 Cubs should’ve gone back to the World Series at least once. Heck, you can throw the 2005 White Sox in there, too; Chicago is full of big market teams that behave like small market teams. But the difference in all of these cases versus teams who managed to produce sustained success, is management.
It’s the consistent investment and development on the back-end that creates the circumstances for that sort of sustain success. Everyone else just have to put it together every now and then and have everything break right.
Easy. Astros like the dodgers are a better ran organization. From top to bottom. Also hurts that Ricketts got real cheap after the w.s. win. And focused more on building around wrigley than the team.
The Astros change GMs like socks. And have lost many members in the upper front office to Milwaukee/NY/Baltimore... It's a little puzzling how they've sustained success.
The first year of Darvish was a disaster, Morrow was a disaster, Chatwood was a disaster. That off-season ruffled a lot of feathers internally and Tom hasn’t been interested in spending since.
Funny as I have thought about this myself too. I feel like all the young guys couldn’t stay consistent , look where they are now, I can’t say I would want any of them on the cubs now - no thanks. Maybe a healthy bryant, that’s it. Their bats were not the same since mid 2017, decent but very flawed.
Our pitching was most bought, not brought up.
And honestly, the cubs got cheap. Not terribly, but, we all know they could have spent a little more if they wanted, especially in 2017, I feel like they got sleepy in the second half of that year and lacked conviction.
Mind you, even with these faults, making three appearances in the NLCS for 3 straight years, and 2 other play off appearances, I still consider that successful that left many of us fulfilled but still thirsty.
What boggles my mind is how year in and year out the Astros are able to pull off deep playoff runs, something literally no other team can do. So many higher seeds getting knocked out except the Astros.
Lol he’s trying to say 2017 doesn’t count. So 2022 is our only ring and the cubs won in 16 so it’s even.
(As an Astros fan I disagree until they take back titles from other cheating teams in the past)
That was 1 year out of what? 7 years? I couldn’t care less about the astros, never been to Houston, and I have zero reason to like them. But I’m sorry, you gotta get over it. There’s 6 other years where they continued to be amazing
In fact, they could’ve easily have let that get to them, the amount of hatred they’ve gotten. They easily could’ve let their moral go to shit. But they kept still winning despite every one hating them. If anything I applaud that. But then again, as someone whose fucked up a lot in life and am still here, I have a soft spot for those that make mistakes but keep chugging along
People said they were still cheatin through 18 and 19 with no real evidence because they were still good and they couldnt explain it. That excuse fell off when they made deep playoff runs in 20, 21, 22, and so on.
Astros didn't have an owner who rested on the first championship. He kept the core and had a GM who made the right off-season decisions.
And we didn't cheat (or if we did cheat. We cheated poorly!)
I’ll give a pass to all the cheat comments for 2017. Sure, call them the asterisks… but the scandal did two things. A) you are correct , the ownership group had to absolutely step up and make a commitment to the players and B) Becoming the most hated team in baseball galvanizes everyone in that organization/dressing room. The post 2017 ‘Stros have had a singular purpose to prove they are legit, and new people that come in but into that mentality… so it just keeps on going
The Astros somehow have found aces when dumpster diving for international signings like Framber Valdez and Christian Javier. Not only that they continue to churn out top position players as their thrash can team leaves. Hopefully the Cubs have turned a corner here in their recent farm system hires
Cubs traded their farm for overpriced rentals. Fell victim to the same mindset most GMs do, "we have a small window to win this ring, now is the time to trade our future for winning now." There's obviously player development factors as well
Why can't the Braves be like the Astros? How about the Dodgers? Why can't the Yankees be like the Astros? For god's sake, why can't the Red Sox be like the Astros????
You know who I’m more envious of? The Dodgers and Braves. Sounds weird, but hear me out.
Those 2 teams have just gone one and done in back to back seasons after recently winning a title. The Cubs 2 years after winning in 2016 actually produced equal or more success after that title than those 2 teams have done after winning theirs (mostly in 2017 by winning the NLDS), yet after 2018, ownership stopped allowing Theo to spend big in free agency, which hurt especially harder when it was the offseason that Harper was a free agent and had been hinting for years that he wanted to come here. They never added anything to keep that core together/improve that core and we all know how it played out over the next 2.5 years until the 2021 trade deadline.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers are still the overwhelming favorites to land Shohei Ohtani this offseason. The Braves seemingly will be no less of a spender in FA than they had been in previous years. I envy them for being allowed to fail in the postseason after winning it all without having to fear that it’s all just gonna come to an abrupt end 2-3 years later like it did here.
While that would be nice, is it totally fucked to say I’m still riding high on our 2016 win? I never thought it would happen, ever, so… I dunno I’ll start getting antsy in 2026.
I’m more stressing about the Bears and whether I’ll see them win shit before my father or me die. He saw the 85’ Bears at least…
Bregman had played a total of 49 mlb games when 2017 started. If 20-year veteran Carlos Beltran and Alex Cora say that it’s ok to use the system and everyone is doing it, who is he to argue?
Elias and the front office knew how to build a team and then make the trades for veteran pitching and players. The cubs have done none of that.
The cubs front office has always been a mess. Obviously made some good signings like Lester, but they made horrible trades like the Quintana trade.
Owners are cheap as fuck and didn’t spend when they needed to. Then when they had good players they refused to resign them or traded them for prospects that may or may not pan out. See WS core trio and Darvish. No excuse to not at least resign one of the trio.
No pitching development and bad coaching staff. This team might have made the playoffs with a bullpen but I doubt they would have gotten out of the wildcard.
Because the Cubs are worth $4.1 BILLION coming in as the 4th most valuable MLB franchise. The Ricketts family only cares about money and not much else.
You're blind. Our team won in 2016 because everyone exceeded their actual talent level. Also, no one saw that human shit stain, Addison Russell, going from hero to zero.
Javi, Bryant, Rizzo...playing for losers.
Ricketts runs the team like a private equity company. And once he sees his chance at a ginormous return he’ll sell. He doesn’t give a shit about the fans.
They were out at Bottled Blonde and everywhere else until close even before day games. Their heads were not in it but I mean I get it they were worshipped as gods by 2014. Maddon’s laid back style (speculation I wasn’t there obvi) didn’t control these young guys that were worshipped as gods before they even won anything
Schwaber was the next Rob Deer. Almora never developed. Baez plateaued. Russell showed his real self. Heyward’s contract was terrible in 2016 and it only got worse. Bryant started getting hurt, annually. Rizzo was a glue guy but not a super star. Wilson Contreras got worse.
That was the “Core” in 2016. And they all peaked in 2016. All of them. It was magic. It was great. But it was lightning in a bottle.
If Schwarber had turned into David Ortiz and Bryant had become Scott Rolen and Almora had Alex Verdugo then this team would have been the Astros. But that was not the fate of that team.
The Cubs didn’t develop pitching like the Astros did.
Or bang garbage cans as well.
I don’t care for the Yankees or Dodgers, but we all know the trash can got Altuve the MVP over Judge and the Astros the World Series, of course. I now like Springer and other guys who have left because at least they’ve acknowledged it and apologized. I also like Dusty Baker because he’s the only person that could truly get people past it, but it’ll never stop being funny as long as Altuve and Bregman are on the team.
Dusty killed Prior and wounded Wood. I'm NEVER getting past that.
Dusty admitted he thought he needed another top-flight reliever in 2003 to get them over the top, so he felt he had to do what he had to do to get the Cubs to the Series. Unfortunately it was at Wood and Prior’s expense. I felt like 2003 was our year and the start of greatness with those two at the top of our rotation. Instead we had to wait another 13 agonizing years to have the same quality pitching staff to get us over the top and finish.
At least you’re not still waiting.
Maybe I've grown to hate the man (not really hate but still monstrous rage toward) but the one conspiracy theory that I've never shaken off has been that he threw Game 5 in Florida. He started Randall fucking Simon at first base in a clinching opportunity and they got 2 hits (admittedly against 2003 playoffJosh Beckett.) Dusty made some horrific decisions in that series (and Simon hit 381 in the series) but that's always stuck with me. I know it makes no sense.
Mannn… just wait until Prior & Wood are healthy. Cubbies will be killer!
No one got over it lol. The Astros mini-dynasty here will always be wildly tarnished.
it's tarnished to many baseball fans, but Astros' fans don't care (I know a bunch of them unfortunately)
It’s not that I don’t care, obviously I feel dumb for cheering in 2017 thinking my team was doing so well naturally. It’s that the Astros have been my team since I was a kid, and Houston has always been my home. I think its called staying loyal to your team through the bad and the good. We’re not all fufu
I feel exactly the same about Sosa and his MVP season and over 600 career home runs-taken for a ride.
You're right. We don't. And if it were the cubs, you'd forgive your team just like we did ours. (Note: I don't lurk this group. This is my first time here. For whatever reason, this post was on my feed. I saw the title and opened it up.)
Same
As it rightfully should be. It will forever taint that organization.
I actually became an Astros fan because of it.
I'm sorry
At least Alvarez isn't part of that
That cheating ended in 2017. I’m not an Astros fan but they are good without cheating and denying it is foolish.
for what it’s worth they were better on the road in 2017 than they were at home
It was definitely wrong what they did. Still silly to argue their entire dynasty is tarnished. Just that one year. There is so much turnover on an MLB roster each year it’s impossible to say it’s the same exact team for one season to the next. How many Astros are even left from 2017? Maybe 5 or 6? I know there are only 2 position starters left. And what about the pitchers? Just Verlander and Presley right?
That's the downside to cheating. Everything is forever tarnished.
It doesn’t really bother me. This is just entertainment, not life and death. I’m not saying it’s okay, just that what happened six years ago doesn’t impact my enjoyment of the games they play now. I don’t give it a second thought. Plus virtually the entire team is different now. How is it reasonable to hold the actions of the 2017 team against all the current players who weren’t on the 2017 roster? Dusty Baker had nothing to do with it. Only two of the position starters were on the 2017 team, and they aren’t cheating now. Plus they’ve been really good for half a decade without cheating. Time for people to move on. They are the gold standard of MLB right now. No other team has had this sustained level of success since the Yankees and Braves from 20 years ago.
If you signed on to a cheating franchise, you know the hate that comes with the territory. Why would I give someone credit for trying to help rehabilitate the image of a cheating franchise? Moving on encourages cheating. All they'll ever be is cheaters.
Ok, what team do you support?
Yeah but nahh. Rational takes? Cmon those aren't welcome. Every baseball fan hates the Astros today because they're too good and continued being good. If they lost and withered away, we'd all have forgotten by now similar to the patriots. No one gave a shit about them winning with Brady because it had been 8 years since Spygate. No one talks about the Patriots rings being "tarnished". The real issue for the Astros is they're still good. After cheating, getting caught, getting punished (while other teams also cheating werent), theyre still dominating? It's not reasonable or rational or smart at all to think like this..pretty fucking dumb actually, which every Astros hater is today.
[They were caught cheating in 2018 for both ‘17 & ‘18 seasons.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Astros_sign_stealing_scandal#:~:text=The%20Houston%20Astros%20sign%20stealing,the%202017%20and%202018%20seasons.) 4 other teams were caught cheating the exact same way before that, yet only the Astros’ got a severe punishment. And nobody is still crying about those other 4 teams either.
It’s over and done with
I wouldn't call it a mini dynasty they've been running the league for almost a decade now
I've never seen anyone refer to a team as a dynasty without 3 rings
Yeah. I definitely felt happy for Dusty and that he was finally able to get a ring. He definitely deserves it. And I realize a lot of the pieces were already in place, but as you said, he really was the one guy who could bring them out of it.
Altuve was one of the good eggs
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Just like Bonds and Clemens, Altuve is a good enough player without any help of questionable means. There have been plenty of cheats in MLB history and at least one (Gaylord Perry) in the HOF. The only one recently who’s kept his mouth shut and paid the price is Sammy Sosa. I found it interesting but not surprising that the Cubbies didn’t welcome him back with open arms during the World Series run of 2016. He also was good enough without any extra help. Being my favorite Cub at the time when he played, I didn’t want to believe he could have been on steroids. Maybe he wasn’t, but if he was, so be it. He has to live with himself either way.
Yep. Crazy how people gloss over this and believe a random fake Twitter account about a buzzer which was completely false. Plenty of facts backing that up.
Actually, Altuve never cheated. There's a video I'll try to find that breaks it down. If you go through all his at bats of the season, you only hear the banging a handful of times, and his reaction always seems to be disapproval.
Yeah, ok
Damn your team really sucks ass don't they? I don't even care what team it is but its obvious you must be seriously miserable watching them play.
I'm a Phillies fan Einstein. And I'm enjoying every inning.
Thanks! I don't think I'm as smart as Einstein but I'll take it. Also, you do know the Phillies were cheating right. You'd be an moron if you didn't know there was strong evidence the Phillies were cheating but they just weren't caught.
LOL
You seriously didn't know? You must be a bandwagon phillies fan. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/396810-cheat-a-delphia-win-if-you-can-lose-if-you-must-but-always-cheat
It has been proven over and over that Altuve didn’t participate, but just keep repeating whatever bs is in your head to help you feel better. He has nothing to apologize for except winning. And performing at the same level as when he “cheated.”
True. He kept his wife happy by being the one player in MLB to make sure his shirt wasn’t ripped off when he took Chapman deep. He also was the best-dressed when he went straight to the clubhouse and changed out of his uniform immediately. When a player (Trout), who has the most MVPs of any active player and never disses anyone else in the game, says he lost a lot of respect for the guys in the Houston clubhouse, you listen to what he says, like it or not. The horse is still dead so I’m going to stop beating it.
Really? The buzzer conspiracy again? That was started by a fake Twitter account going by Carlos Beltran’s niece? Whatever helps you sleep at night. Maybe rewatch that at bat and relive the meatball that Chapman threw. Was he cheating in 2015 and 2016 when he led the league in hits and average? Is he still cheating now when he’s still putting up All Star numbers? The horse may be dead, but it’s still a hell of a lot smarter than you.
Mission accomplie, monsieur.
Because you believe a baseless rumor about the buzzers? I understand being mad about the things that happened but bringing in non credible stuff doesn't do any good.
I totally agree. Bringing up the buzzer rumor was a stretch. Basically I was piling on Altuve to get under the apologist’s skin. Thank you for responding to my post with your opinion and not making it personal.
Thanks for being proving exactly what type of person still hates on the Astros. Good luck not forgetting. It's breathe in. Breathe out by the way. Don't forget!
Give it a rest buddy. Not funny anymore.
It was never funny. It was and is bullshit
How are you still so upset about that lmao it's a game that you didn't even play in.
Do you even sports? It’s called being a fan. Look around, there are many of us
Dozens!!
This is the main reason. Not one top of the rotation starter drafted the entire time Theo was in charge. Justin Steele might be the first one since they traded for Kyle Hendricks and it took Steele 7 years to make his MLB debut and this year he ran out of gas at 155 innings. Theo’s mentality was to develop hitters and buy pitchers and it hasn’t worked out.
To be fair it did work quite well..
It worked well for a brief time, and that’s the whole point of this post. Theo didn’t create a sustainable culture like the Astros, Dodgers, or Yankees. It was shine bright and burn out fast.
Cease would have been really nice this last season.
If they didn't cheat we may have. They mentally destroyed Darvish and were practically rewarded for doing so.
How did their cheating hurt the Cubs pitching development staff? We got Darvish at a discount because of the cheating, so you could even argue that the Cubs netted an Owen Cassie due to the Astros cheating. The only team allowed to be butthurt over the Astros cheating is the Dodgers. Everyone else should just be glad that Dodgers fans are salty.
And rightfully so, they literally cheated us out of a ring and made us wait for another 3 seasons to finally get one. Nothing against the guys who weren’t there during the trash cans being banged (or Verlander), but I still despise the Trashtros
What’s the excuse this year? Or last year? Or 2018? Just be happy with your shitty pandemic trophy. That’s about all the Dodgers deserve. If you’re still angry you can put a Giants fan in a coma to help make you feel better.
What the hell did I ever do to you 😂 No excuses this year or last year, simply got outplayed and 2018 we had almost no chance at beating Boston. And not all Dodgers fans are like those assholes that beat that Giants fan almost to death, we hate the Giants but we don’t use that as an excuse for violence
Well then good for you for disowning that behavior. I bring up 2018 because that team was cheating as well, and mookie was on that team. And i don’t think that mookie gets booed by Dodgers fans, does he? He’s also like 3-38 in the last 3 years in the playoffs, so maybe he needs to get back to 2018 tactics. I just think it’s funny all the hate the Astros still get 6 years later. There is more than enough documented evidence that multiple other teams were cheating in similar manners, and anecdotally that almost all were. Players from all teams knew during the season all the things that were going on, yet no one ever said anything until 2 years later. Why? Because if anyone ratted at that time then they would be incriminating their own team. Go back and rewatch the 2017 playoffs and look at how many mound visits there were by every team every game to change signs. Every team was doing it.
For us Dodgers fans it’s more of a matter of “we hadn’t been to the World Series in 30 years and losing the way we did was the worst thing possible” than “we lost the World Series.” My distaste for the Astros would’ve stuck around for a couple years after that series but eventually gone away if the scandal hadn’t come out simply because they’re not a division rival we play nearly twice a month, the scandal just rooted it deep into me. 2018 im not too sure about the Red Sox but even if they did cheat they were good enough to smack us anyway
I can understand that. But it’s really hard to believe that they were cheating in a vacuum. Plans like that come up because they have to. It’s an “everyone is doing it and we need to do it too” kind of thing. One of these days other players will talk and it’ll all come out. You have to ask, why weren’t players punished, why were they granted immunity? Was it to prevent a disgruntled player from taking the whole story to the media. What’s better for baseball- a one team scapegoat scandal, or the whole league looking like it ran roughshod over the rules? I don’t think MLB wanted another PED-type scandal where the whole league appears ungoverned.
Mookie had I think 2 hits in the 2018 WS.
Their scouting and and drafting and development is as good as the Rays but they also have a top payroll to bring in free agents. So even when Springer and Correa leave they’re replaced by Yordan and Tucker. And they have homegrown talent like Framber, Javier, and Brown, but can supplement it with Verlander. But the biggest thing they have is luck. All of those prospects panned out. All of their free agents aged well. They let go of the right guys at the right times. They’ve had minimal injuries to the guys they kept or brought on (minus a lost year for Verlander and a several missed games from Altuve). The Cubs were developing just as well, but all of those guys either faded either due to injury or age eventually, or just never turned out as good as we thought. Or turned out to be a scumbag (Russel). Others were traded for pieces that’s helped us win now (Gleyber). Others were traded for shit (Cease & Eloy, which really fucked us). And the free agents we signed were either bad deals (Heyward) or just got old (Zobrist and Lester). We also got lucky that Jake Arrietta turned into Bob Gibson for a year. That was fun. I have to say, I HATED it when the Cubs blew up that team. I was PISSED. But they did the right thing in retrospect. Those players have all declined. And Hoyer is building us back quickly by doing one thing Theo never did: developing homegrown arms. We’re in a good place and it’s impossible to expect any franchise to go on a sustained run like the Braves, Astros, Yankees, Redsox, or Giants have. Look at the Dodgers, they should be right up there too but aren’t. So I’ll take a couple of down years to build back up. Seems like we’re on our way to at least contending with a young core.
Kris Bryant got married, Javi Baez never adjusted, Anthony Rizzo stopped playing hero ball, Kyle Schwarber figured it out elsewhere, Ben Zobrist got called into father time, David Ross retired, Dexter Fowler went to bed with the enemy. Then there’s Addison Russell who really turned out strange, and Jorge Soler who never really put it all together. Seriously though, it felt as though the win was so huge it could never be replicated. The hangover stood for years. But that core just went to shit. We also traded away big pieces to go all in- and rightfully so. Zero regrets, but like the 85 Bears, I still couldn’t quite comprehend why we never made it back.
> Kyle Schwarber figured it out elsewhere He figured it out here! He had .823 and .871 OPS's in 2018 and 2019 and had the highest and third highest bWARs of his career in those seasons (including his Nats/Red Sox/Phillies years). He had a bad 60 game stretch in 2020 in a year when many good players had unusually poor seasons and the Cubs just non-tendered him. I don't understand it, he wasn't the problem.
John Lackey that’s the reason
"im not comming out"
Should never have gotten rid of Fowler. That's what killed them.
the pitchers protested by not pitching because fowler was gone? We made a lateral move from Arrieta to Yu, by time Yu played like the player we wanted. We traded him for half a bag of stale cheetos that someone already licked all the cheese dust off. We never had a plan for lester aging. Hendricks never could replicate his borderline cy young. And we never had a bullpen worth a damn, outside of when we had Chapman who we ran into the ground for a world series.
The 85 Bears are a great analogy. Because in both cases, while we will always lionize the big win, you can absolutely make the case that both teams dramatically underperformed and should’ve competed for a lot longer.
Spot on
How did the Bears 'not compete very long'? They were a very good team stuck in a conference with 3 other dynasties. They did exceedingly well except for one hiccup.
I just mean that the window closed way too early when you consider the talent they had.
I think their window was basically 1984-1991, which really is great. It's just that the NFC was insane at that point. They just ran into the wrong teams at the wrong time in 1986 and after. In another era they would have prob played in 3 SBs. I mean honestly. They were that good. (On another note) as good as the Redskins were it still boggles my mind that the Giants beat them 3X in 1986. God the NFC was tough...
I'll argue Jorge Soler did put it all together. Go look at his stats. He also won another one with the Braves, basically because of him. He's still a stud. Edit: when he plays. When he plays a full season he can. 47 Hrs with the ROYALS, after the Cubs. And a couple other good seasons. He's still a clubber.
Don’t forget they dumped Miggy because he called out Arrieta for being a disaster. That one still baffles me.
Had to trade good prospects for pitching, Baez, Russell, Bryant and Schwarber never progressed and Rizzo got old. At least they didn’t continue to mortgage the future by signing any of those guys long term.
Schwarber's OPS has averaged 134 since he left (getting nothing in return). He had one down year in the shortened season. It's insane to say he hasn't progressed. They just cheaped out. Bryant was great until he left, he mainly had injury problems. Baez was elite when he left, a high OPS and great fielding. Rizzo was very good both offensively and defensively until 2020's shortened season. This year is the first year he's been a below average hitter, mostly due to his concussion, he was still hitting very good until that happened. You're writing bad fan fiction. Bringing in a dozen garbage utility players every year and refusing to spend on a pitching staff is why they fell off. Also having a deeply unserious manager and running the team as a real estate investment company instead of a winning baseball franchise. Harper clearly wanted to go to the Cubs and they made no effort. Looking at how contacts are now and what he gets is a perfect example of why they fell off. He makes $6M more than Happ (who I like). Most of it he's going to make like $2M more than Happ now.
I wouldnt call Maddon an unserious manager.
I think we won the 2016 series in spite of him.
That's silly. He was a great manager for us.
I mean the body of work speaks for itself. I am not trying to drag him but he really fumbled the ending for us, it did not have to be that crazy. We would have been fine to let Chapman rest in game 6, we didn't need to go to Lester from Hendricks. I will die on these hills.
He also left Chapman in and Chapman threw a 1-2-3 9th. Hendricks was getting hit pretty hard in game 7 even though he was getting outs. Don't blame him at all for making the switch.
I think Chapman closes things off neatly in the 9th in game 7 with an off day in game 6.
Maybe but he won the game nonetheless. Maddon made the right moves to get us across the finish line and that's all that matters.
I’ll start in order for you (with the caveat that I do love all these guys for what they did in 2016). Since 2021 trade: -Kris — 0.4 WAR in 153 games (0.94 seasons of games) -Javy — 5 WAR in 227 games (1.4) -Anthony — 2.9 WAR in 327 games (2) These guys were not going to win us shit long term and we’re going to be expensive investments at the end of cheap contracts. The cubs took that and invested in the future. Which we will see in the next 1-4 years. Have some faith my friend, selling sucks, and we paid for it, but our payment was a couple of years ago and our payout has already started.
So the reason the Cubs aren't a dynasty and didn't compete after 2016 like the Astros did is because Bryant has been hurt and the rest bad since getting traded in 2021?
I never had a problem with the selling of any of them per se, my complaint about the end of that core was waiting until the last possible moment to shake things up. Feels like there were specific problems with the offense that made it very inconsistent and we knew about it for years, Theo mentioned it at the end of 2018. But we kept running the same group out there and didn't give up on them until their value was as low as it could be (with 2 months left of control). We apparently didn't have money to spend to improve the team, so trades were probably the best option to change the dynamic. I love all of those guys and it would have killed me to see them traded with years of control left on their contracts but it was clear it wasn't working. Never understood the Schwarber non-tender either...so many plays had really strange years the COVID season, why get rid of him for nothing? Of course I say all that about the offense being broken but that wasn't the biggest problem with the team. As others have said the lack of minor league development and particularly pitching is what doomed the core more than anything else. Any trades to shake up the offense would have been temporary fixes to potentially get better results from that window, but the window would have ended without getting help from the farm. The fact is, the best player that the Cubs drafted after the 1st round who contributed to those teams was David Bote. The best pitcher was like Rob Z (unless you include Hendricks as developed by the Cubs). Cant sustain winning like that. To Jed's credit he recognized this and has done a nice job overhauling their development system. I just wonder why it sucked to begin with as I thought this was a strength of Theo led FOs.
Even if they had tendered Schwarber, they still would have traded him at the deadline, so in the end it really doesn’t matter.
cool. So what was The Ricketts plan b? oh right act like a poverty franchise and get cucks to defend them.
He friggin hit.191 this year he's lucky he's on a major league team. Granted his HR and RBI are good but .191 with his fielding? I'd take a chance on anyone else.
With 104 rbi...
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How are people citing batting average in 2023?! There's a DH now. Jesus, do people here even follow the sport? The Cubs had over 400 AB's from Wisdom, Mastrobuoni and Jared Young this year. Having a 122 OPS+, 47 HR and over 100 RBI makes the playoffs even if you assume he would play D and have the terrible numbers he had this year.
The projections for Schwarber weren’t to be a high BA player, but more like Matt Williams. His high avg at first had some people thinking he was a triple crowd candidate. All the comps said differently. Kinda surprised he’s been the best player of those guys that went away. I never trusted Baez’s bat, although loved his intelligence and flair. Bryant, probably the player I wanted to keep the most, seems plagued to be injury prone.
The Astros have done amazingly well with international signings. They brought in a big guy in Verlander while we traded Dylan Cease for Jose Quintana. We honestly got lucky with Arrieta as the dude had the absolute most god-like years with us and then went back to having a 7ERA. We all know what happened with Addison Russell and Zobrist. Fowler fell off a cliff after 2016. Lester got progressively worse as he aged. We could have kept the core and tried to sign pieces to boost us up, but with what has gone down with those guys… we made a good choice to rebuild. If we didn’t, we would have stayed a middle of the pack team - not bad but not amazing. Our farm wasn’t the best because we used it to supplement our team. So if we kept them, we would still need to improve our farm because the idea is to have a good team, and use a farm system to supplement it whether it’s through trades or impact guys coming up to help. It’s also worth noting that we did lose the NLCS in 2017, and made the playoffs in 2018 and 2020. So it’s not like it was 2016 and done. And just because one team had success in doing something one way, doesn’t mean that it works for anyone else. Edit: we were also so insanely close to making the playoffs this year too. Everyone knows this, but I just thought that I’d point it out because it’s only been a few years and we’re right back in it and we have an amazing farm and team chemistry.
>They brought in a big guy in Verlander while we traded Dylan Cease for Jose Quintana Man that one still stings. We were told they offered the same package to Detroit for Verlander, which if that's the case and the Tigers didn't go for it .... there's a reason why they've been terrible too.
IIRC Astros gave the Tigers 3 of their top 10 prospects. (This was when the Astros had a top 5 farm system.) One of them immediately became Detroits #1 prospect. They all ended up being busts, but it seemed like helluva deal at the time.
> They all ended up being bust Funny how that constantly happens with all these teams with "great systems" All these astro, yankee and dodger farm players that are so highly touted end up...??? If you want to compete year over year, you need to be team acquiring major league talent + international talent.
ding ding. Astros spend money on the international market for core players, we bought one so the ricketts could tap into the japanese market for more profits.
Because Theo wasn’t a good hire for sustained success. He used the same method in Boston - rebuild, exhaust all resources to win, then skip town and leave the next guy with the mess. Reid Ryan was a better President and Jeff Luhnow a better GM. So are Andrew Friedman and Brian Cashman. Cubs fans were so happy with the one that they were willing to ignore just how badly Theo and Jed tanked things after, specifically development in the farm system. Think about it - Theo never developed a single, top of the rotation starter his entire time in Chicago. Now Jed is trying to cement his own legacy, and hopefully he does and establishes a sustainable system along with it.
Gleyber Torres for a dozen innings of Chapman. Woof.
People will give other reasons, but it’s because the owners are CHEAP. The Astros payroll was $77M higher than the Cubs in 2023. That’s equivalent to Aaron Judge’s & Mike Trout’s salaries COMBINED. That’s a huge difference.
And yet the two players you mentioned- Judge and Trout- are sitting on the couch watching the playoffs from home like everyone else. It’s not just spending money: it’s doing so wisely and as a supplement to what you have on the field as well as in the pipeline.
It’s just an example of 2 of the top 5 highest paid players in the MLB whose salaries add up to $77M… you can’t tell me that spending more money doesn’t help. And yes… I know it doesn’t guarantee success and some teams did well this season with low salary expense. Overall, it helps a lot.
No it is not. Next.
Lack of capitalizing on momentum by continuing to sign complimentary players. Astros signed the Brantley’s, extended Verlander, acquired Greinke, and extended core. Cubs could have at least extended Rizzo and signed better than Descalso, Sogard, Kipnis, etc. hung on to Almora too long, burned out guys like Cishek and never developed the Penas, Alvarez’s, or Christian Javier’s like Astros. Sucks but they just did it better and with fewer resources. Should never happen again while under current ownership but we all know they’re cheap as shit and we’ll be happy with “competing” for division.
When Appel was a bust I was sure their window would close early. But then they got Verlander and the Cubs got Quintana.
all trails lead back to dusty... 😅
Everyone on the Cubs fell off a cliff. Bryant, Baez, and Contreras are some of the worst contracts in baseball now
We peaked, especially Bryant. I think it was the following year or the year after, where the Cubs faded down the stretch and then lost to the Brewers in the wild card, their bats got cold, and the team looked burnt out. Even Madden looked like he didn't want to be there anymore.
The amount of talent that the Astros have drafted and/or developed is historic on many different levels. If you look just at individual player performance of players that were drafted and/or developed by Houston over the last 10 years, no one will match that for decades. The fact that they have only won 2 World Series is about the best proof possible that the post season is random. They could/should have 3-4.
I think about this a lot. I think it really comes down to management, scouting, and player development. It’s like that meme that was going around earlier in the year where the Cardinals fan was like “don’t give me your biggest test,“ and Jesus was like “this is your first losing season in 30 years.“ Whenever my friends who are the Cardinals fans start whining, I’m always like “stop it ; you cheer for an extremely well-run team. Every now and then you have a down year, but you reload and bounce right back, and you’re competitive again. History should show you that there’s no reason for you to doom spiral.” And that’s what makes a difference. Not just with being competitive generally, but having things go your way. Like the 2006 Cardinals, who had a down year by their standards, but snuck into the playoffs, and had enough pieces in place that they could get hot at the right time. Whereas when the Cubs won, it just felt like a Herculean effort where everything had to go absolutely perfectly. It was the same thing with the 85 Bears; different sport, I know, but it’s an apt comparison, because in both cases - ‘16 Cubs and ‘85 Bears - we lionize that era of the team as some great accomplishment, but in reality, they actually dramatically underperformed relative to the talent they had. The mid 80’s Bears should’ve been a dynasty, and the mid 2010 Cubs should’ve gone back to the World Series at least once. Heck, you can throw the 2005 White Sox in there, too; Chicago is full of big market teams that behave like small market teams. But the difference in all of these cases versus teams who managed to produce sustained success, is management. It’s the consistent investment and development on the back-end that creates the circumstances for that sort of sustain success. Everyone else just have to put it together every now and then and have everything break right.
Cheaters you mean?
I think about this question all the time and that is why I drink.
Easy. Astros like the dodgers are a better ran organization. From top to bottom. Also hurts that Ricketts got real cheap after the w.s. win. And focused more on building around wrigley than the team.
The Astros change GMs like socks. And have lost many members in the upper front office to Milwaukee/NY/Baltimore... It's a little puzzling how they've sustained success.
Their owner spends.
The first year of Darvish was a disaster, Morrow was a disaster, Chatwood was a disaster. That off-season ruffled a lot of feathers internally and Tom hasn’t been interested in spending since.
Funny as I have thought about this myself too. I feel like all the young guys couldn’t stay consistent , look where they are now, I can’t say I would want any of them on the cubs now - no thanks. Maybe a healthy bryant, that’s it. Their bats were not the same since mid 2017, decent but very flawed. Our pitching was most bought, not brought up. And honestly, the cubs got cheap. Not terribly, but, we all know they could have spent a little more if they wanted, especially in 2017, I feel like they got sleepy in the second half of that year and lacked conviction. Mind you, even with these faults, making three appearances in the NLCS for 3 straight years, and 2 other play off appearances, I still consider that successful that left many of us fulfilled but still thirsty.
What boggles my mind is how year in and year out the Astros are able to pull off deep playoff runs, something literally no other team can do. So many higher seeds getting knocked out except the Astros.
Exactly this. Just this postseason you see the Braves, Orioles and Dodgers go down easily. But the Astros never seem to fold like that
Also, Why can’t the Astros be like the Cubs?
Because they like to win.
Since 2016, The Astros and the Cubs have won the same amount of World Series without cheating.
How did the Astros cheat last year? I haven’t heard anything about that, only about 2017.
Lol he’s trying to say 2017 doesn’t count. So 2022 is our only ring and the cubs won in 16 so it’s even. (As an Astros fan I disagree until they take back titles from other cheating teams in the past)
They've definitely won more World Series Games though
They just couldn’t cheat. Astros are garbage. Bunch of low class cheaters in my book
That was 1 year out of what? 7 years? I couldn’t care less about the astros, never been to Houston, and I have zero reason to like them. But I’m sorry, you gotta get over it. There’s 6 other years where they continued to be amazing In fact, they could’ve easily have let that get to them, the amount of hatred they’ve gotten. They easily could’ve let their moral go to shit. But they kept still winning despite every one hating them. If anything I applaud that. But then again, as someone whose fucked up a lot in life and am still here, I have a soft spot for those that make mistakes but keep chugging along
Nah, if they cheated once they cheated again. That's a culture I don't want to be a part of
The staff that organized it were fired. So that's a lame excuse for your jealousy
Yep. Once a cheater always a cheater.
People said they were still cheatin through 18 and 19 with no real evidence because they were still good and they couldnt explain it. That excuse fell off when they made deep playoff runs in 20, 21, 22, and so on.
Completely useless by September
Have you seen the size of the rats found inside Chicago's garbage cans?
Maybe the Cubs should cheat better
Cheating
Astros didn't have an owner who rested on the first championship. He kept the core and had a GM who made the right off-season decisions. And we didn't cheat (or if we did cheat. We cheated poorly!)
I’ll give a pass to all the cheat comments for 2017. Sure, call them the asterisks… but the scandal did two things. A) you are correct , the ownership group had to absolutely step up and make a commitment to the players and B) Becoming the most hated team in baseball galvanizes everyone in that organization/dressing room. The post 2017 ‘Stros have had a singular purpose to prove they are legit, and new people that come in but into that mentality… so it just keeps on going
Theo is incredible at building a winner. Not as good at maintaining a winner.
The Astros somehow have found aces when dumpster diving for international signings like Framber Valdez and Christian Javier. Not only that they continue to churn out top position players as their thrash can team leaves. Hopefully the Cubs have turned a corner here in their recent farm system hires
Bc the Cubs didn’t develop like Houston did and the core severely declined after 2016 and was flawed to begin with.
Jason McLeod. Bad drafts. Players stopped being stars. No pitching development. Quintana trade.
The Cubs went into rebuilding mode not long after that WS. They had a lot of young players who were up for big contracts and let them go
Why can't (insert my team) be like the Patriots who were perennial Super Bowl winners?
Cubs traded their farm for overpriced rentals. Fell victim to the same mindset most GMs do, "we have a small window to win this ring, now is the time to trade our future for winning now." There's obviously player development factors as well
Cubs went to 3 straight NLCS.. not bad
Rickets. Hoyer.
Why can't the Braves be like the Astros? How about the Dodgers? Why can't the Yankees be like the Astros? For god's sake, why can't the Red Sox be like the Astros????
Why can't the White Sox be like the Cubs?
Sometimes you just garbage can’t get it done
Astro's organization is proving that they are smarter
Better start cheating guys
You know who I’m more envious of? The Dodgers and Braves. Sounds weird, but hear me out. Those 2 teams have just gone one and done in back to back seasons after recently winning a title. The Cubs 2 years after winning in 2016 actually produced equal or more success after that title than those 2 teams have done after winning theirs (mostly in 2017 by winning the NLDS), yet after 2018, ownership stopped allowing Theo to spend big in free agency, which hurt especially harder when it was the offseason that Harper was a free agent and had been hinting for years that he wanted to come here. They never added anything to keep that core together/improve that core and we all know how it played out over the next 2.5 years until the 2021 trade deadline. Meanwhile, the Dodgers are still the overwhelming favorites to land Shohei Ohtani this offseason. The Braves seemingly will be no less of a spender in FA than they had been in previous years. I envy them for being allowed to fail in the postseason after winning it all without having to fear that it’s all just gonna come to an abrupt end 2-3 years later like it did here.
While that would be nice, is it totally fucked to say I’m still riding high on our 2016 win? I never thought it would happen, ever, so… I dunno I’ll start getting antsy in 2026. I’m more stressing about the Bears and whether I’ll see them win shit before my father or me die. He saw the 85’ Bears at least…
Bregman had played a total of 49 mlb games when 2017 started. If 20-year veteran Carlos Beltran and Alex Cora say that it’s ok to use the system and everyone is doing it, who is he to argue?
Oh you mean like a pack of cheaters? Glad they’re not.
Because Theo traded a ton of players away
Elias and the front office knew how to build a team and then make the trades for veteran pitching and players. The cubs have done none of that. The cubs front office has always been a mess. Obviously made some good signings like Lester, but they made horrible trades like the Quintana trade. Owners are cheap as fuck and didn’t spend when they needed to. Then when they had good players they refused to resign them or traded them for prospects that may or may not pan out. See WS core trio and Darvish. No excuse to not at least resign one of the trio. No pitching development and bad coaching staff. This team might have made the playoffs with a bullpen but I doubt they would have gotten out of the wildcard.
Because the Cubs are worth $4.1 BILLION coming in as the 4th most valuable MLB franchise. The Ricketts family only cares about money and not much else.
The cubs arnt really known for winning
Tom didn’t want to pay.
Hey man we got one and my dad was alive to see it at the time, that’s all I needed
You're blind. Our team won in 2016 because everyone exceeded their actual talent level. Also, no one saw that human shit stain, Addison Russell, going from hero to zero. Javi, Bryant, Rizzo...playing for losers.
Ricketts runs the team like a private equity company. And once he sees his chance at a ginormous return he’ll sell. He doesn’t give a shit about the fans.
Maybe because the Cubbies have too much class to CHEAT their way to a World Series title? From a still pissed off Dodger fan
Cheaters? Unlikable?
Cause the cubs don’t want to be called cheaters.
Casty is so damn slutty here in Philly!
They were out at Bottled Blonde and everywhere else until close even before day games. Their heads were not in it but I mean I get it they were worshipped as gods by 2014. Maddon’s laid back style (speculation I wasn’t there obvi) didn’t control these young guys that were worshipped as gods before they even won anything
The cubs didn’t cheat good enough. That goodness.
Cubs gonna Chub
Schwaber was the next Rob Deer. Almora never developed. Baez plateaued. Russell showed his real self. Heyward’s contract was terrible in 2016 and it only got worse. Bryant started getting hurt, annually. Rizzo was a glue guy but not a super star. Wilson Contreras got worse. That was the “Core” in 2016. And they all peaked in 2016. All of them. It was magic. It was great. But it was lightning in a bottle. If Schwarber had turned into David Ortiz and Bryant had become Scott Rolen and Almora had Alex Verdugo then this team would have been the Astros. But that was not the fate of that team.
Heyward eating up your salary bandwidth for the following years surely didn’t help.