By
Rick Morris
NOTE:
Playoff picks thus far are 3-3, 3-1 in the LDS round.
Chicago Cubs vs.
New York Mets:
In the ALCS, organizations that have been pointing for this opportunity are
matched. Kansas City culminated a long
rebuild last year with the pennant and is trying for more right now. Toronto has been in full-on “big market, win
now” mode since 2013, utilizing aggressive trading to build a contender on a
compressed time frame. But the NLCS
offers a complete contrast: two young teams who might have hoped to be in this
spot by 2017, but are here now. For
further context: imagine Kansas City in this spot in 2012, when they still
sucked (72 wins) and were going with all of their potential young studs. That’s how far ahead of schedule the Mets and
Cubs are.
Of
the two stories, New York’s is more unlikely.
Yes, they’ve been building the best young pitching staff they’ve had
since the cursed “Generation K” of 1996, but this much domination this soon is
a lot to ask. And their lineup at the
beginning of the year looked like the sad joke that it’s been for most of the
Citi Field era – and that’s before David Wright, a vaunted player although a glorified
slappy at this stage, went down with a potential career-ending injury.
But
then, as the pitching staff rocked it, the hitting actually moved towards them
on the positive side of the ledger.
Wright returned and contributed.
Curtis Granderson minimized the hole in his swing from one that you
could drive a Mack truck through to one that you could drive a compact car
through. Prospect Michael Conforto added
some punch after his callup. And, most
importantly, Yoenis Cespedes was acquired in the first real “go for it” move
since the end of Willie Randolph’s tenure and he played at an MVP pace –
minimizing, as did Granderson, the all-or-nothing tendencies. He truly has been, in the famed Tweet of
Jerry Seinfeld, “a Cespedes for the rest of us.”
The
upset of the Dodgers should not have been completely shocking, though, because
the biggest factor in New York’s rise was the inexplicable collapse of perhaps
the most talented team on paper in the game, the Washington Nationals. Over the course of 162 games, the Mets beat
down a team better than themselves in the eyes of the experts, only to find
another team with the “great squad that can’t close” reputation in LA. There certainly are substantial similarities
in the teams left in the Mets’ wake.
In
the other dugout, there’s amazing irony in the fact that the first Cubs team
ever to win a postseason series at home – the one chasing the franchise’s first
world championship in 107 years – is, like the Mets and also Houston in the
American League, ahead of schedule.
Actually, given how awful they were in 2014, they’re well ahead of
schedule. It’s an incredibly young team
and also incredibly explosive, as the power demonstration against St. Louis
just proved. As strange as it seems, for
a team and fanbase starving for the title, this squad is playing with house
money this year. Granted, you never know
for sure that you’ll get another look this good, but with the growth curve
ahead of this sensational core and Joe Maddon at the helm, they’re set up
better than anyone in baseball (again, with the possible exception of Houston)
to get multiple looks at the whole ball of wax through at least 2020. The Mets, Cubs and Astros are, stylistically,
the poster children for baseball in 2015, with the amazing breakthrough of so
many players under 25 years of age this year.
In this new era of extreme youth not being a handicap, Chicago carries
no inherent limits due to their composition.
They
seem like the kind of team to be very streaky the rest of the way – with
everyone really mashing and feeding off of the positive energy, or being shut
down with multiple strikeouts. Neither
extreme would feel very surprising at the moment.
What
does help them in terms of having a dependable anchor in the middle of the
lineup is the preternatural maturity that Kris Bryant has shown in his rookie
year. Already, he’s neck-in-neck for
best hitter on the team with Anthony Rizzo, who emerged in the past two years
as one of the top stars in the National League.
The arms, collectively, sans Jake Arrieta, are simply
above-average. The ace cooled off a bit
in Game 4 and had to start regressing to the mean from his superhuman level at
some point, but he’s still the best bet in the postseason on any night that he
pitches. Still, you have to like the
Mets’ depth among starters more – their top three could give you a shutdown
performance on any given night – but the innings are piling up rapidly for a
group unaccustomed to the toll. Minus
the questions about whether they’ll hold up for another grueling round (or
two), you’d have to like their chances to go all the way with a staff that can
deliver the performances that you need in October. But those questions do exist and as such, the
super-young Cubs are actually the safer pick.
In 2003, in the aftermath of the Steve Bartman incident, the Cubs lost
to the modern game’s poster child for a young team “winning before its time,”
those Florida Marlins. Fittingly enough,
a Wrigley Field team built in the likeness of those conquerors finally gets
over 12 years later. Pick: Chicago Cubs
in 6.
World
Series
Toronto
over Chicago Cubs in 7
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