An instructive series continued Saturday, the visiting team having lost as many games (18) as the Braves had won. As vast as the gulf between these clubs seems, it wasn’t so long ago — 2013, to be exact — that the Braves won as many games (96) as the Cubs lost.
In October 2011, Theo Epstein left the Boston Red Sox, a long-suffering franchise he helped steer to two World Series titles, for a longer-suffering franchise. (As anyone conversant with the Curse of the Billy Goat and poor Steve Bartman knows, the Cubs haven’t won it all since 1908.) Epstein and his crew set to work tearing down a club that had gone 71-91. The 2012 Cubs went 61-101.
(Any of this sounding familiar?)
Over three Julys, Epstein and Co. shed a rotation’s worth of pitchers — Paul Maholm to the Braves in 2012; Matt Garza to the Rangers and Scott Feldman to the Orioles in 2013; Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel to the A’s in 2014. Two of those trades didn’t avail the Cubs much. The other two reaped windfalls. Addison Russell, ranked by Baseball America as the No. 5 prospect when Oakland traded him, is the Cubs’ shortstop. Jake Arrieta, who compiled a 5.46 ERA in 3 1/2 years with Baltimore, was the National League’s 2015 Cy Young winner.
The Cubs were 200-286 in the first three seasons under Epstein, but losing a lot enables you to draft really high. Third baseman Kris Bryant was the No. 2 overall pick in 2013; through Friday, he had 14 homers and 43 RBIs. Kyle Schwarber, a big hitter without a real position, was No. 4 in 2014. (Schwarber was lost for this season to a knee injury.) Albert Amora, the sixth player picked in 2012, was promoted this week from Triple-A, where he hit .318.
The Cubs bet on young position players and bought their pitching, signing Jon Lester and John Lackey and re-signing Hammel as free agents. Jason McLeod, the Cubs’ VP of scouting, told Baseball Prospectus that his team’s amassing of bats was more because of the luck of the draft than design. Whatever the cause, the effect is that the Cubs’ rebuild looks rather different than the Braves’.
In this week’s MLB draft, the Braves spent six of their top seven picks on pitchers. Said scouting director Brian Bridges: “We’re going to keep hitting the arms … Paul Snyder (the venerable and revered scout) just told me it takes 20 to get one (successful pitcher) — those are tough odds. But if you get enough pitching, you can use it to get hitting.”
Different means, same end in mind. The question, then: Is there anything preventing the Braves from doing as the Cubs have done?
Said Jason Heyward, whose trade to St. Louis in November 2015 was the first move in the Braves’ rebuild: “You look at the Rays and the Royals and the Astros. Those teams showed they can come around. Who’s to say it can’t happen for the Braves? It’s happened before in this city.” (Yep. In 1991. Heyward turned 2 that August.)
Heyward signed with Chicago as a free agent last winter, a final tile in a newly glorious mosaic. Dexter Fowler, who like Heyward hails from Atlanta, has seen two rebuilds up close: He was with Houston in 2014, the first season since 2010 that the Astros hadn’t lost 100 games; he came to the Cubs last year, just as they were going from losers to 95-game winners.
“When I was with the Astros, you could see all those young guys starting to come up,” Fowler said. “You could tell they were going to be good.”
Moral of that story: Not all rebuilds run straight and smooth. The Astros made the playoffs last season, but are sub-.500. The Cubs went from newfound strength to something approaching dominance. Their presence at Turner Field shows how far these Braves have to go — but it’s also a reminder that losing by design, if given time and buttressed by luck, can work.
