Can Natural Justice Prevail Over the Cubs?
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Getcher previews from Keri and Jaffe. The Cubs are a great team, even better than the 103 wins would suggest. Epstein isn’t perfect — when a guy you just have upwards of $200 M to is a healthy scratch with the platoon advantage in Game 1 of the World Series, it’s safe to say you overpaid him — but it’s an outstanding organization. However, the Indians are a very, very good one and have a much better chance of winning a 7-game series than the odds suggest.
It’s easy to give away too much for too little impact in midseason transactions, but the Miller and Chapman trades are examples of really good ones from the standpoint of the contenders. In the case of the Cubs, I can see an argument that given how young their core of star talent is (and I admire Billy Beane, but Jesus the Russell trade was awful, even worse than the Donaldson fire sale) they paid too much for a half-season of Chapman, but I don’t think so. Baseball history is littered with formidable young talent bases that either didn’t win anything (the Killebrew/Oliva/Allison/Kaat Twins, the Mays/Cepeda/Marichal/McCovey Giants, the Carter/Raines/Dawson/Rogers Expos, the ARod/Griffey/Edgar/Johnson Mariners) or ultimately won a championship but underachieved (the Aaron/Mathews/Spahn/Adcock Braves, the Tigers of the 60s and 80s, the Gooden/Strawberry/Carter/Hernandez Mets.) Young or not you go for it when you can win, and a great reliever is of more value in the postseason than over 162 games. Watching two Hall of Fame managers duel with this talent should be fun.