Bleacher Bums Forum

It's kind of interesting to imagine how the next season will evolve, and provide more context for the Cubs building plan. 

Cubs have won WS already, and two other playoff seasons, and are likely to get into the playoffs more times future, so the Theo legacy is secured even if they never get to another WS or never rank among the top 2-3 teams in the league again in any future season. 

But it's going to be interesting to see how some of the philosophies play out:
1. Accumulate hitters, trade for good pitching.  They picked up a couple of rental relievers, and Eloy/Quintana.  Not sure that's quite the quantity or quality of cost-controlled young pitching that was envisioned in the plan?  Maybe if Happ and Schwarber explode this year, there might still be a chance for more.

2.  Young hitters develop.  Premise of the plan and Maddon's view is that young hitters develop and improve.  What they had in 2015, the expectation was that by 2018 the improvement would be huge.  But to some degree Russell/Baez/Schwarber weren't much better 2017 than 2015 (or Soler).  (Baez numbers were better, as deeg will note).  Think 2018 will be a big year to see whether Schwarber, Baez, Russell, Almora, and Happ show improvement.  If not, I think it's going to be harder to assume that 4th year guys are just young and will  start to figure things out in years 5 and 6. 

3.  Hangover plateau?  Development is often non-liner, and has progression interrupted by periods of plateau or regression.  Coming off WS they were all stars, perhaps not much perceived need to get better.  If status-quo is 103 wins and WS, who other than Heyward needs to mess with success?  But perhaps this year, after hitting badly first half and 2nd season, plus ugly situational hitting stats, perhaps there will be some motivation both organizational and individual to adjust?