Comments on: Simply The Best: How the 2016 Cubs Stack Up Against 1984 and Company

By: Tommy

Tommy — Fri, 25 Mar 2016 03:17:05 +0000

HA! Thanks for your payment!

Keep up the good work, man!

By: Joel Reese

Joel Reese — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 13:17:12 +0000

That’s a really good point. It’s hard to believe how badly they fell apart in ’04. Do you remember when they traded for Garciaparra? Weren’t you euphoric? I was like, Wait — the Cubs don’t get players like this. And then to see them just fritter it away, like that friggin’ Victor Diaz homer off Hawkins… so painful.

However, that was more of a slow burn — Game 6 (and Game 7 may have been even worse) of the ’03 NLCS was just so painful in one moment.

But hey, enough of that! The sun is shining (not in Chicago, but surely somewhere), birds are singing, kittens are playing with yarn… let’s smile!

By: Joel Reese

Joel Reese — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 13:10:22 +0000

Thanks, Tommy! Check your Paypal account later for the money we agreed on.

By: Tommy

Tommy — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 08:26:00 +0000

LOVE IT. Fun read, Joel. Thanks for putting this together!

And Dave Kingman was my childhood hero! Sure, you got a HR or a K, but man, did his HR’s fly a long ways!

Good work, buddy! Your science is dangerous! I’ll take it!

By: Sinnycal

Sinnycal — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 05:32:24 +0000

As crushing as 2003 was, I sometimes feel 2004 was actually more disappointing. The expectations carried over after how the previous season ended, and you were taking that team with its young pitching studs and adding Derrek Lee, bringing Maddux home, plus ultimately trading for Nomar. It was a very exciting team on paper, and watching the season unfold the way it did was a much longer, more drawn out process than the 2003 collapse. In many ways, 2004 is probably a better parallel to 2016 than any of these other seasons.

By: Joel Reese

Joel Reese — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 23:49:17 +0000

I didn’t include the ’15 team because this team is going to be largely identical (with a few notable upgrades, I realize). But between that and the fact that it would make categorizing the manager’s role much more difficult, I felt like it didn’t quite fit.

By: NoBPusername

NoBPusername — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 23:34:33 +0000

Any reason why 2015 wasn’t included? Sorta confused on that considering it’s different than this year’s squad and was arguably the most fun team of all time

By: victor19nyc

victor19nyc — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 19:38:00 +0000

Me too.

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 19:14:26 +0000

I will say that giving equal weight to pitching and hitting probably evens it the different eras quite a bit…at least enough to be acceptable in an ‘inexact science’ type of comparison

By: Jared Wyllys

Jared Wyllys — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:53:21 +0000

I look forward to reading that one.