Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
April 01, 2008
James Q & A

Freakonomics publishes a Q & A with Bill James, where fans sent in questions. I like this one about the Cubs:

Q: Why can't the Chicago Cubs get into the World Series? Is it the small park? Low salaries? The curse of the billy goat? Does sabermetrics provide any insights?

A: Talking about the origins of it -- the Cubs fell into a trench in history in the late 1930's, when almost all baseball teams built farm systems, but the Cubs for several years refused to do so. This put them behind the curve, crippled them for the 1950's, and really the organization did not fully overcome that until about 1980.
Since 1980 they have had several teams that could have wandered into a World Series, with better luck. They haven't had any one overpowering team -- like the 1984 Tigers, or the 1992 Blue Jays, or the 1998 Yankees -- that was so good that it demanded a seat at the Last Banquet of Fall. And, unless you have a team that good, you're at the mercy of the fates.


Posted by David Pinto at 05:57 PM | Statistics | TrackBack (0)
Comments

James leaves out the most important factor, in my opinion: quality of ownership. I don't know enough about the history of the Cubs to judge, so let's take that other accursed franchise, the Red Sox. Until John Henry et al. took over the team, the ownership valued institutional loyalty above all else. In football, the Detroit Lions have the same problem. The Patriots used to, before Robert Kraft bought the franchise.

Some owners simply don't know how to build a winning organization. Some value profit over winning -- Carl Pohlad and Jeffrey Loria seem to fall into this camp. Some (Peter Angelos, come on down!) think they know baseball but they don't.

So there is truth in Bill James' answer, but the biggest issue of all is quality of ownership.

Posted by: jvwalt at April 1, 2008 06:30 PM

If the Cubs failed to build a farm system when everyone else already had, that falls squarely on ownership. It's simply one highly concrete example of ownership shirking its responsibilities. Probably a worse one than those mentioned about contemporary owners, given the multi-decade impact it had.

Posted by: DenverGregg at April 1, 2008 07:02 PM
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