The fun or not so fun part about this is that as a fan you can blame any and everyone you want because they all had their share in what is now officially a failure of a 2024 season for the Cubs. I believe the clip below was from Tom Ricketts’ speech at the start of spring training and the goal was clear for this team: win the division.
Well, after dropping the series finale 5-3 to the Oakland A’s on Wednesday and losing their second consecutive series to a bottom-five team in MLB, the Cubs were officially eliminated from the NL Central Division race. The Milwaukee Brewers clinched the NL Central for the second straight year and their third in the past four seasons.
For me, it starts at the very top and that’s ownership. Of course, Jed Hoyer deserves a big chunk of the blame for putting together this mediocre roster and well a lot of fans thought this group could be good enough, so I guess the players deserve criticism for not performing to their talent from start to finish.
And then there’s the manager, who I think is still fine, but sure, give Craig Counsell some shit, too, I won’t blame you.
At 77-75, the Cubs may ultimately top their 2023 win total, but frankly that’s just not good enough and it hasn’t been for a long time. The team’s last division title came in 2020, that 60-game season. So, if we’re counting actual MLB seasons, the Cubs haven’t won the NL Central since 2017 and haven’t reached postseason play in a full year since 2018.
Bad. Failure after failure for the Chicago Cubs.
Think back to the late 2000s and into the 2010s, when Theo Epstein took over. From 2009-14, the Cubs didn’t reach the playoffs. That’s six straight years, including the three-year rebuild heading into the 2015 season. The Cubs are getting closer to being eliminated from the Wild Card race this year and once that happens it will mark five years in a row (not counting 2020) that this organization will fail to play in the postseason.
Tom Ricketts=Jerry Reinsdorf of the Northside of chicago.