I empathize with your son — no one likes to leave a good party. Unfortunately, when it comes to the Cubs and the post-season, their parties have a tendency to turn sideways quickly, building toward that cocktail of anger and confusion you reference.

To wit, over the past seven post-seasons the Cubs have participated in (beginning in ’84), they’ve exited those post-seasons on losing streaks of 3,3,3,3,3,3,4. One could make a semi-cogent argument that those 22 games were the most important games the Cubs have played in the last 70 years. And they lost all 22 of them, having been out-scored 127-52 in the process. There was some randomness and bad luck along the way, but mostly it just came down to saving their worst for last. Thinking of those 22 games simply boggles the mind.

Having lived through all seven post-seasons, I can tell you the Mets series had a very, very familiar feel to it. Once the party started to go sour (right around the Murphy homer off of Arrieta), the feeling that this was going to be another grim slog to the end grew stronger.

I do believe we have the right management team in place to break this string. I love the young, high character core they’re building. The next phase can only be about bringing in elite arms. I’m excited to see what happens.

I think there was a natural letdown after, finally, vanquishing the Cardinals when it mattered. This didn’t hurt me somehow as much as the ones in Lou’s years because the expectations were different going in.

If I can look at the bright side, it’s that there will be no off-season complacency about keeping a player because he was part of a championship team. The Cubs need a couple of front-line starting pitchers, and I’m confident Theo & Co. will get them.