Rozner: Cubs' plan still hard for some to fathom
The Cubs could not possibly be in a wild card spot this deep into August.
Really, it's impossible given all they did wrong.
If you're to believe everything you saw and heard, the season was over the moment the Cubs decided seven years of Kris Bryant was better than six years, and sacrificed the first eight games of the season.
You'd be right, of course, if you pointed out that the Cubs went 5-3 and the season didn't actually end right there, but maybe those who think the Cubs don't care about winning believe they would have gone 8-0 had Bryant been here the entire time.
But some are now suggesting Bryant is a bust, so I'm not sure how you can have it both ways.
Whatever.
If the Cubs really cared about winning instead of making money, Bryant would have started the season with the major league team. At least, that was the narrative for the first month of the season.
Yet, here the Cubs are in a playoff spot, so how can that be?
Especially since Jon Lester was also a bust for $155 million. Except, not so much.
In his last 10 starts, presumably healthy after a shoulder issue in the spring, Lester has averaged 7 innings with a 2.13 ERA, 69 strikeouts against 14 walks, an opponent batting average of .194 and a WHIP of 1.12.
The Cubs' top prospects have all been called into question when they struggled, which is hardly surprising. Anyone familiar with baseball knows young players often struggle to make adjustments at the big league level, and it's something Theo Epstein talked about roughly 42 times during spring training when he warned there would be tough times with the team counting on so many kids.
But in 4 games against the Giants this weekend, Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, Jorge Soler and Addison Russell went 20-for-53 (. 377) with 5 doubles, 2 HR, 16 RBI and 14 runs scored.
So if you're keeping score at home, those four rookie busts drove in 16 of the Cubs' 22 runs and scored 14 of their 22 runs.
Pretty decent busts.
But, of course, the Cubs aren't trying to win because they didn't deal any of those core prospects for a big-name pitcher or bat that would have guaranteed them a World Series in 2015.
That's because the Cubs don't care about winning and they're not trying to win, right? It's a boring narrative that passes in some archaic arguments for logic.
It seems that the same people who didn't get the plan, the ones who said a teardown and rebuild wouldn't work, now see that it is working and want to mortgage the future for players like David Price, who they can now sign in the off-season for - wait for it - nothing but money.
Let's see … prospects and money, or just money?
Tough call.
But the point of the rebuild wasn't to win the World Series this year. The point of the rebuild was to reach a place in time when the Cubs will have a chance to win the World Series every year.
Heck, it might happen this year anyway, but Epstein didn't plan for this year. He planned for the next 10 years and the opportunity to compete for the big prize every time they go to spring training.
It's not about one-shot deals that have gone so horribly wrong for the Cubs dozens of times in the last 100-plus years.
Is that really difficult to understand for so many of the eternally confused?
The humorous part is that if the Cubs make the playoffs there will be cheering only until the Cubs lose, and then the story will return to what the Cubs didn't do - over the winter and at the trade deadline.
It will be about how they could have won it all if only they cared about winning.
Sorry, but shaking your head doesn't make the nonsensical disappear.
The Cubs are a year ahead of schedule, maybe even two. They fell hat-backwards into Lester and Joe Maddon and they jumped all over them, which moved up the Cubs' chance for winning - but not the plan for winning.
One can only assume that story will be missed as well as the Cubs are accused of being cheap and refusing to try to win.
It would be laughable if it weren't so tedious.
brozner@dailyherald.com
• Listen to Barry Rozner from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on the Score's "Hit and Run" show at WSCR 670-AM.