The Chicago Cubs Are Already In Rare Company, And Could Be Special

Special baseball teams don't come around very often, which is a relief insofar as "special baseball teams" is kind of a smuggish, unpleasant-looking phrase. "Special" is one of those bland, vague terms like "nice;" it would be better if we just said "rare." A 90-72 team is blandly successful, but far from historic; every season has a couple of those. The same thing is true of a 72-90 team. Forgettably good, forgettably bad, it's all amnesia once it's over, because you try to distinguish the good and bad parts of the same bowl of soup.

The current edition of the Chicago Cubs are well out of the soup, and quite possibly (sorry) special. While nothing in what the Cubs have done is definitively predictive—it's May, as you've probably noticed—they have as good a chance as they've ever had to wrap up their century-spanning quest for their next title; their 24-6 record (.828 winning percentage) puts them in an unusual community that hasn't ejected too many members. In the entire post-1900 history of baseball, just a handful of teams have been this good in their first 30 games. Only two teams since the early 1900s have gotten off to better starts, the 1955 Dodgers (25-5) and the 1984 Tigers (26-4). Almost all of those teams had happy endings when October was done. Those Dodgers and Tigers teams both won the World Series.

There will be some regression, and even then what the first 30 games prophecy will still be true. No team plays .800 baseball for a full season. Other than the 1906 Cubs, no team has played even .750 baseball. Just 10 teams have carried a .700 winning percentage through a whole season and, like the 1906 Cubs, most of those teams aren't particularly useful as examples. They were great teams with great players and were no doubt a distraction from whatever hijinks Theodore Roosevelt was up to that summer, but those Cubs also played during a time when the professionalism of the big leagues was still inchoate; dominant teams had .400 hitters and 30-game winners because talent was poorly distributed.

That's why just three teams have won with anything like that kind of consistency in the postwar period—the 1954 Indians (111-43, .721), the 1998 Yankees (114-48, .704), and the 2001 Mariners (116-46, .716). Just one of those three teams won the World Series, because that's harder to do now too—and with unbalanced schedules, a team's record might tell us less than it used to. That said, an .800 winning percentage with a .150 discount is still a 105-win pace. Which is to say: still pretty special.

So the Cubs will drop from this pace. Literally every one of the 24 teams from 1900 to the present who started out 23-7 or better have declined (see table below), but that hasn't mattered much. Put aside the 1902 Pirates, who didn't have a World Series to go to. Of the 23 teams remaining, 16 went to the World Series and 10 won it. Two, the 1981 A's and the 2001 Mariners, lost in the ALCS. Just five failed to reach the postseason altogether. It seems unlikely that the talent heavy Cubs will join them.

Just one of those teams dropped off so hard that it posted a losing record and finished lower than second. That was Yogi Berra's 1972 New York Mets, a team that had great pitchers like Tom Seaver, Jon Matlack, and Tug McGraw, but not very much in the way of hitting; that situation only got worse when Rusty Staub broke his hand and only played in 66 games. After the first 30, the pitching dropped off to the league-average level and the offense just stopped. The Mets went 60-66 the rest of the way, giving back a 6.5 game NL East lead and finishing 13.5 games behind the first-place Pirates.

The Cubs have greater depth than those old Mets, who were going through a period of non-investment by ownership that would uh never, ever happen again. Nomenclature isn't destiny any more than a good 30-game start is, but when Staub got hurt, one of the main beneficiaries was an outfielder named Dave Schneck, and it is scientifically proven that no one named Schneck is going to win an MVP award at the major league level. And if this makes me a Schneckist, so be it; Schneck was a .191/.251/.310 hitter and bad hitting is the last acceptable prejudice. The Cubs have already survived the loss of Kyle Schwarber with nary a Schneck in sight. Even Jorge Soler, for all his struggles to date, is not remotely Schneckian.

Thirty years later, the Boston Red Sox opened the 2002 season with 23 wins in 30 tries. The Red Sox had some strong pitching, beginning with Pedro Martinez, but lacked their usual offensive panache. There was no first baseman, Manny Ramirez got hurt or bored or something, and David Ortiz was still half a continent and a year away. Up by five on the Yankees after 30, the Sox went 70-62 (.530) the rest of the way; the staff, while successful, lacked rotation depth, and the offense dropped a run per game compared to what it had done in the first 30. The Yankees blew past them while playing at a .654 pace.

Those are the only two teams of recent vintage to fail to capitalize on a start resembling the Cubs' and reach the postseason. The reason why, despite the inevitable slowdown, is obvious: the baseball season is a marathon, but not so long a marathon that a start like this can easily be frittered away. At 24-6, if the Cubs play just break-even ball the rest of the time way they'll finish at 90-72. That kind of finish would be a huge comedown given how the Cubs have played thus far; with the exception of the 1972 Mets, it would also be unprecedented. Yet, in many seasons that would be good enough for a wild-card berth, and from there another run at the elusive championship.

As the Cubs' 15 predecessors suggest, they'll likely do better: When a team is this good for any portion of the season, it's not an illusion, not a hoax, not an imaginary story. Rather, they're doing something reflective of superior talent:

And those teams that were just a game worse had outcomes just as good:

So let's say you've been waiting around since 1908 because you're an ageless demon of a Cubs fan who licks his horrid sagging flesh under a manhole cover on Lakeshore Drive and lives off the quagga mussels that have infested Lake Michigan. In fact, you put them there, because you're into seafood. You sat through seven losing World Series opinions through 1945, and since then it's been all invasive shellfish and self-pity. You've lived through Ronny Cedeno and Ryan Theriot, Kevin Orie and Gary Scott, not to mention the mound stylings of Edwin Jackson and Kyle Farnsworth. You've dwelt in darkness a long time, more than long enough. So have the Cubs. This time it's for real. This time, history suggests, it could even be pretty special.