Author: rincon

Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2001 Diamondbacks land in this spot? 

Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling were both basically impossible in 2001. This was MLB’s highest offense era, in the season in which Barry Bonds hit a record 73 home runs.

Diamondbacks teammate Albie Lopez, in his 13 starts, posted an ERA of 4.00 on the nose, which made him a comfortably above-average pitcher: the league-average ERA for starters in 2001 was 4.57. Schilling finished at 2.98 over an MLB-high 256.7 innings, while Johnson bested that with an MLB-leading 2.49 ERA over 249.7 frames. The pair combined for 506.1 innings, a 2.73 ERA and 665 strikeouts. The Big Unit received all but two first-place votes for the NL Cy Young, with Schilling receiving those. The two combined for 254 of the total 288 vote points available for the award, which makes sense given Schilling had twice as valuable a season by wins above replacement as the third-place finisher, Cardinals starter Matt Morris, and was himself nearly 1.5 wins behind Johnson.

Brian Anderson and Robert Ellis finished third and fourth on the D-Backs in starts in 2001, and both were sub-replacement-level pitchers. It just didn’t matter in the long run: Johnson and Schilling pitched in a combined 70 games, in which Arizona went 52-18, a .742 winning percentage. Or, a 120-win pace. They had some wiggle room to be worse in their other games, basically, and still make the postseason. In fact, that’s what happened: they went 40-52 in games started by pitchers who weren’t Schilling and Johnson, but 92 wins was enough to win the NL West.

The Diamondbacks knew what they had and did not have when the postseason began, which is why Johnson and Schilling pitched basically constantly. Schilling started Game 1 and Game 5 of the NLDS, with Johnson taking Game 2 in between. Both pitchers started a pair of NLCS games, and between the two of them, five of the seven World Series games, with Johnson coming in relief in Game 7 from the eighth inning to the Fall Classic’s conclusion. Schilling pitched 48.1 postseason innings, which was, at the time, a record until Madison Bumgarner’s 52.2 innings in 2014. Johnson’s 41.1 innings was the third-most at the time, and is the sixth-most now. There were 155 total innings pitched by Diamondbacks’ pitchers in the 2001 postseason: Schilling and Johnson accounted for 89.2 of those, or, 58% of them. Hey, it worked in the regular season, why not try it in October?

Their success was not solely the work of two starting pitchers, however. Luis Gonzalez led the offense with a monster year that included 57 homers, while Reggie Sanders and Mark Grace both had well above-average years. Despite these three, the offense was below-average overall, which is why it couldn’t pick up Anderson, Ellis and the other struggling starters. Johnson and Schilling slung the whole team up on their backs, though, from April through October, and became legends for it.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2013 Red Sox land in this spot? 

The 2013 Red Sox were Ben Cherington’s first team as general manager. Not in the sense of it was the first year that he was Boston’s GM, but in that he had full control over who would even be part of the roster.

The massive disappointments and payroll of 2011 and 2012, leftover from the Theo Epstein era, were no more once Cherington shipped a quarter-billion in future contracts to the Dodgers in August of 2012, freeing him up to bring in Mike Napoli, Stephen Drew, Ryan Dempster, Shane Victorino, Koji Uehara, David Ross and Jonny Gomes. All of them save Dempster performed at the high-end of expectations: when paired with Dustin Pedroia doing his usual excellent combination of high-on-base offense and even better defense, David Ortiz’s power and patience, and a rotation that featured Clay Buchholz, Jon Lester and John Lackey, the worst-to-first turnaround made an obvious sense.

Pedroia, Ortiz and Victorino had star-level performances: Victorino was not only a fan favorite for his high-energy play across Fenway’s odd right field dimensions, but he hit .294/351/.451, led the team in steals (23 for 27) and bested even standouts Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury in defensive wins above replacement. Besides Ortiz, this was not a lineup built on power: the Red Sox were second in hits overall, third in walks — just eight behind the league-leading Rays, however — second in batting average and first in on-base percentage. They were also first in slugging, but not because of home runs: they were first in doubles with 363, 41 more than the next-best club, and “just” sixth in home runs. It was a group effort: that the lineup lacked an easy out was a problem opposing pitchers never solved.

While the Red Sox didn’t get ace-caliber seasons from either of Lester or Lackey, the pair of Boston veterans were still the kind of No. 2 starters a championship team needs. Dempster was disappointing, but did soak up 171 innings, while 25-year-old Félix Doubront did more than enough with the offense Boston had. Clay Buchholz was the ace when he was on the mound: he posted a 1.74 ERA, but across just 16 starts, earning decisions in 13 of them to the tune of a 12-1 record. Buchholz missed the middle of the season, but returned before the postseason and made another five starts there. The bullpen was anchored by Koji Uehara — a closer who received both Cy Young and MVP votes — but also included Junichi Tazawa (3.16 ERA), Craig Breslow (1.81), Andrew Miller (2.64) and former closer Andrew Bailey (3.77). There wasn’t much relief depth behind this crew, but Boston didn’t need the help, either, especially after moving Doubront to the pen in October.

Boston once again faced St. Louis in the World Series, and took the 2004 rematch four games to two. The Cardinals were up 2-1 to start; the Red Sox then won Game 4, 5 and 6 in a row for their third World Series title in 10 seasons.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2017 Astros land in this spot? 

It’s difficult to overstate how much the Astros lost before 2017. From 2011 through 2013, they lost 106, 107 and 111 games, then still dropped 92 in 2014. As those draft picks selected during those terrible seasons started to make it to the bigs, though, Houston’s fortunes changed: in 2015, they made the postseason for the first time since 2005, and then in 2017 they won 101 games and found themselves in the World Series against the 104-win Dodgers.

Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, George Springer and Alex Bregman were all stars in the lineup — three of the four made the All-Star team, even, and there was certainly an argument for Bregman to make the AL’s Midsummer Classic roster, too — and all homegrown. Altuve led the AL in hits and the majors in batting average, but it wasn’t an empty average, despite his (generous) listed height of 5-foot-6. Altuve hit 24 homers and 67 extra-base hits overall while slugging .547, second on the team among regulars behind Correa. The only flaw in Correa’s game was that he missed considerable time: the shortstop logged just 109 games played in ‘17, but in that time he slugged .550 with 50 extra-base hits of his own, and was plenty healthy in the postseason, where he batted .288/.325/.562 with five homers and 14 RBIs in 18 games. Bregman was valuable at the plate and defensively, too, and while his true breakout was to come, he was still a four-win player at age 23, on a championship team. Springer hit .283/.367/.522 with 34 homers in the regular season, then a ridiculous .292/.386/.611 with 6 homers and 44 total bases in the postseason, with five of those blasts coming in the World Series alone, earning him MVP honors.

Josh Reddick signed as a free agent before the season, and was just as good as Bregman. Yuli Gurriel, signed as an amateur free agent in mid-2016, had his first full campaign and posted an .817 OPS. Nori Aoki and Carlos Beltran didn’t provide much in the lineup, but they didn’t have to with all of the above happening. Throw in a rotation that included Dallas Keuchel (2.90 ERA), Brad Peacock (3.00) and Charlie Morton (3.63) before the midseason Justin Verlander acquisition, and you understand another reason why it didn’t much matter that two lineup spots underperformed. 

You can’t talk about the 2017 Astros without mentioning the sign-stealing scandal that saw them punished with fines and lost draft picks — as well as executives suspended by MLB — but even with that going on, it’s difficult to deny how absurdly good this team was. Altuve was a marvel; Springer’s World Series performance was one for the ages; a healthy Carlos Correa has always been a special player. Seeing Justin Verlander finally win a ring was its own kind of special, and Houston’s fans certainly suffered enough over the years waiting for a championship — even the Bagwell and Biggio years never provided one.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2002 Angels land in this spot? 

It’s easy to dismiss the excellence of the 2002 Angels based on their top two players. Darin Erstad hit just .283/.313/.389 at a time when the “Moneyball” Athletics were praised for a focus on on-base percentage. David Eckstein, all 5-foot-6 of him, hit just 8 homers in 2002: 26 players hit at least 30 that season, including Angels’ leader Troy Glaus. Power and patience were the rules of the day, but the Angels were built differently.

Erstad was not an offensive force: he was merely a superhuman-level defender in center, while offense was in the midst of its historic peak. Per Baseball Reference’s accounting, Erstad was worth 6.3 wins above replacement, the most on the Angels — his 4.2 defensive WAR represent the 12th-most ever. Erstad’s contributions to the success of the Angels’ pitchers wasn’t incalculable, but it is nigh unfathomable. As for Eckstein, he was often looked at as something of a punchline, given extra credit on a “pound-for-pound” basis because of his small size and skills that seemed old-school or centered grit. The truth is that Eckstein was a killer defensive shortstop who posted a .363 on-base percentage in 2002, third on the team behind Tim Salmon (.380) and Scott Spiezio (.371). He was the Angels’ most “Moneyball”-style player in more ways than one.

The Angels didn’t lack power or patience, not on a roster with Salmon, Glaus and Brad Fullmer on it. They also had players who excelled in one or the other, like Garret Anderson (.306/.332/.539 with 29 homers) or Spiezio, who slugged just .436 at first base but was on base constantly to make up for it, as well as the likes of Erstad and Eckstein, who just by putting on a glove made the pitching staff significantly better. And the pitching is what truly separated this team from the rest of the competition.

Jarrod Washburn and Ramon Ortiz both threw over 200 innings, with the former excelling enough to finish fourth in the AL Cy Young vote. Ortiz made up for leading the majors in home runs allowed with 40 by rarely giving up any other kind of hits, a feat made easier by the defense behind him — if it wasn’t going over the outfield fence, Erstad had a chance at it. Kevin Appier was no longer the kind of arm who could carry a staff, but as a mid-rotation starter on a championship team, he was more than qualified. Rookie starter John Lackey was a revelation from the moment he joined the team midseason: in 18 starts, Lackey produced a 3.66 ERA, effectively replacing Aaron Sele in the postseason rotation before a torn rotator cuff made that a necessity. The bullpen had ace closer Troy Percival, and rookie sensation Francisco Rodriguez.

The 2002 Angels are remembered for besting Barry Bonds’ Giants in his best chance at a World Series. They didn’t stop Bonds — no one could — but their pitching slowed the rest of the Giants enough to win the franchise’s first and only championship.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2022 Astros land in this spot? 

The Astros were an extraordinary story of … well, worst to first doesn’t begin to cover it, considering the depths of their struggles at the start of the decade. The reputation of that team was marred somewhat by the sign-stealing scandal that rocked MLB in 2020 — the Astros’ organization was punished, and multiple executives lost their jobs.

The 2022 season, then, was something of a redemption story for the club: some familiar faces from 2017 were still on the roster, yes, like Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman and Justin Verlander, but the core of the next Astros club was also in place, and the beloved Dusty Baker was now the manager. Yordan Alvarez, 25, led the team in wins above replacement, while Jeremy Pena, 24, ranked fourth among position players. Kyle Tucker, in his age-25 season, was second in homers with 30. Alvarez won a Silver Slugger, Tucker picked up a Gold Glove and some down-ballot MVP votes while, Pena finished fifth in the AL Rookie of the Year race and snagged a Gold Glove, too. No Carlos Correa, no George Springer, no Yuli Gurriel? No problem.

The rotation had depth, with Cristian Javier throwing 148.2 innings with a 2.54 ERA, Framber Valdez building on a very promising 2021 with an AL-leading 201.1 innings with a 2.82 ERA, and of course the ageless Verlander. The righty had one of the greatest seasons a 39-year-old starting pitcher has ever managed, but that context also does his 2022 a disservice: it was one of Verlander’s greatest seasons, too, one in which he led the majors in ERA (1.75), park- and league-adjusted ERA+ (218), led the AL in Wins (18) and winning percentage (.818) and won the AL Cy Young. He didn’t have the sheer innings volume of his younger days, but otherwise, this was as good as any season he ever had. Verlander is a future Hall of Famer — that’s quite the year. Combine that with closer Ryne Stanek’s 1.15 ERA, and it’s no wonder the Astros were a machine.

Houston won 106 games in the regular season, looking nigh unstoppable for lengthy stretches. They won 11 games in a row at one point, and at another late in the year had an 18-game lead, a season-high, over the second-place Mariners. Seattle would end up winning 90 games — they still finished 16 back of Houston. The Astros went 12-7 against the Mariners and Athletics, 13-6 against the Angels and 14-5 against the Rangers — taking care of business in their division is how they climbed as high as they did. They weren’t just at 106 wins because of that, however, as their AL opponents in the postseason learned when Houston swept both the Mariners and 99-win Yankees. The Phillies beat them twice in the Fall Classic, in two of the first three contests, but the Astros could not be stopped: they won Game 4, 5 and 6 by a combined score of 12-3.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2020 Dodgers land in this spot? 

The Dodgers, save Mookie Betts, were not a team full of stars having star-caliber seasons. Betts led the majors in wins above replacement, putting up nearly four of them in just 60 games in an absurd display at the plate and in the field. Other than that, what the Dodgers won with was volume.

Justin Turner did not have his very best season. Corey Seager has had better ones, too. It didn’t matter, because almost every regular was firing on more than enough cylinders to propel Los Angeles to the best winning percentage of any World Series winner of the century. Betts wasn’t actually the Dodgers’ best hitter in 2020: that was catcher Will Smith, who hit .289/.401/.579 in 37 games. Smith finished one point of on-base percentage above Justin Turner, who batted .307/.401/.460. AJ Pollock was tied with Betts for the team lead in homers with 16. Cody Bellinger hit just .239, but still had a .789 OPS thanks to racking up walks and extra-base hits. Joc Pederson and Enrique Hernandez fell flat, but were picked up by performances off of the bench from utility man Chris Taylor (.270/.366/.476 in 56 games) and Edwin Rios, who regularly filled in for Turner at third. All told, the Dodgers hit .256/.338/.483, in a league that batted .245/.322/.418.

The rotation was similarly built: Walker Buehler was the “worst” among the traditional starting five thanks to a 3.44 ERA — the league-average ERA in 2020 was a full run higher than that. Kershaw (2.16), Tony Gonsolin (2.31), Dustin May (2.57), Julio Urias (3.27) and Buehler made for a fearsome starting five that made up for the mess that was Ross Stripling’s season — he ended up working mostly out of the pen by September. That bullpen was loaded, too: closer Kenley Jansen was one of the weaker parts of the regular relief corps, and he had a great season. The Dodgers built a lengthy bridge between their starters and Jansen, with Blake Treinen, Brusdar Graterol, Jake McGee, Dylon Floro, Victor Gonzalez, Adam Kolarek, Caleb Ferguson, Scott Alexander and Joe Kelly all putting up some eye-popping numbers in relief in the limited innings forced upon them by the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Kershaw didn’t rack up the innings in that shortened campaign — he fell a few short of having his 2.16 ERA qualify for the ERA title — but he threw another 30.2 frames in October, arm still feeling fresh like the rest of the staff thanks to the Dodgers’ reliance on six starters and a loaded pen. While Kershaw’s postseason performances are the one blemish on an otherwise Hall of Fame career, in 2020, he looked as dangerous to hitters in October as he did in the regular season: Kershaw had a 2.93 ERA across five postseason starts, including two Dodgers’ wins in the World Series against the Rays in which he allowed a combined three runs.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2007 Red Sox land in this spot? 

It took two years for the mega-trade that brought Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell to the Red Sox to pay off as hoped, but it’s difficult to argue with the results once it finally did.

Acquired in November of 2005, Beckett was expected to be the replacement for Pedro Martinez in the Boston rotation that never surfaced that summer, but instead he posted a 5.01 ERA in 2006, leaving Curt Schilling as the lone ace on the squad again. In 2007, though, Beckett was exactly what the Red Sox wanted: he led AL pitchers in wins above replacement, ranked first in the majors in wins with 20 and posted a 3.27 ERA over 200 innings. Lowell was actually his usual quality self in 2006, but in 2007, he had the best season of his 13-year career, batting .324/.378/.501 to go along with his usual excellent defense at third.

It wasn’t just those two, though. J.D. Drew signed as a free agent before the season, and put up a .373 on-base percentage. Rookies Jacoby Ellsbury (.353/.394/.509 in 33 games) and Dustin Pedroia (.317/.380/.442) were standouts, with the latter taking home AL Rookie of the Year honors in a lopsided race. Kevin Youkilis hit .288/.390/.453 and won a Gold Glove at first base. Coco Crisp was also much better in his second year with Boston, and anchored the outfield defense… which was necessary, because Manny Ramirez was his usual self out in left. Ramirez could still hit, though, and contributed a .296/.388/.493 campaign. David Ortiz was the best of the bunch, leading the AL in on-base percentage at .445 while crushing 35 homers and 88 extra-base hits overall. The Red Sox as a team had a .362 on-base percentage. The league average was just .336: Boston was relentlessly on base, and their patience let them crush starters sooner than most clubs — the second time through the order instead of the third — and give them more opportunities against relievers, as well. Relievers weren’t an endless parade of 100-mph pitchers in 2007; things were different then, you wanted your starter in as long as possible.

Except for Boston’s pen, which featured Jonathan Papelbon (1.85 ERA in 59 games) and Hideki Okajima (2.22 ERA in 66). Before them, there was Beckett as well as Schilling, who managed just 151 innings across 24 regular season starts, but was healthy for four starts and three wins in October. Daisuke Matsuzaka wasn’t the ace he’d look like in 2008, but he did throw over 200 innings of above-average ball after signing a six-year, $52 million deal to leave the NPB for MLB. Tim Wakefield was his standard reliable self at the back-end of the rotation, and 23-year-old Jon Lester, after having his rookie season interrupted by a cancer diagnosis in 2006, returned to the mound and started the deciding game of a World Series sweep for Boston.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2009 Yankees land in this spot? 

From the point of view of the Yankees, 2009 was a long time coming. New York had last won a World Series in 2000, and had lost in both 2001 and 2003 — there was also that whole letting the Red Sox come back from down 3-0 in the 2004 American League Championship Series thing to contend with. For most teams, a nine-year wait isn’t significant, especially not for a franchise that was constantly in the thick of things in the intervening years. For the Yankees, though, after racking up championships in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000, nine years felt like an eternity, especially with the rival Red Sox winning in 2004 and 2007 in between.

The 2009 season put a stop to the waiting, and with authority. The Yankees won 103 games, powered by free agent acquisition Mark Teixeira, who not only won a Gold Glove at first base in a lineup that already had future Hall of Fame shortstop Derek Jeter in it, as well as Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Canó and Johnny Damon. Hideki Matsui slugged .509 with 28 homers as the team’s DH, which, in comparison to what Jeter, Rodriguez and Cano were doing, was basically a footnote. That’s not a knock on Matsui, so much as a reminder of just how good the rest of the lineup was.

The rotation wasn’t as strong, but that’s not the same as saying it was weak. CC Sabathia was a Cy Young contender and the rotation’s anchor. A.J. Burnett threw 207 innings as an above-average starter, with Andy Pettitte having a similar campaign in his age-37 season. The back-end of the rotation was less reliable, but the bullpen trio of Phil Hughes, David Robertson and the fantastic Mariano Rivera — who had a 1.76 ERA with 44 saves even at the age of 39 — helped keep that from being a problem in October. 

The Yankees handled the Twins with ease in the ALDS, sweeping them in three games. The ALCS took more work, but New York handled the 97-win Los Angeles Angels in six, with Sabathia picking up two of those wins en route to being named series MVP for his 16 innings with just two runs allowed. The World Series was against the 2008 defending champion Phillies — the Yankees also won the Fall Classic four games to two. While there might have been more potent sluggers on the roster in the regular season, no one in this World Series made more of an impact than Hideki Matsui. He hit .615/.643/1.385 with 3 home runs and 8 RBIs in six games: in Game 2, his solo shot against Pedro Martinez snapped a tie and led to a Yankees’ win, and in Game 6, Matsui went deep off of Pedro again to put New York up 2-0, before adding another run with a single in the next inning. The Yankees would win Game 6, 7-3, and the World Series with it.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2018 Red Sox land at the top of the list?

The 2018 Red Sox won 108 games, the most of any World Series-winner this century. The reason that the 115-loss Orioles tied for the fifth-most losses since 1901 was because of these Sox: Baltimore lost 16 of their 19 meetings with Boston, and were outscored by 61 runs in those contests, more than twice the rate against non-Red Sox opponents, where the Orioles were 44-99. Similarly, the Blue Jays were probably a mediocre club, but going 4-15 against the Sox led them to a 73-89 record instead.

It wasn’t just that the Sox took out the AL East’s worst clubs while unbalanced divisions remained in place. The Yankees won 100 games and one of the two wild cards, while the Rays went 90-72. Boston went 10-9 against New York, with both teams winning as many games as they did despite that even-ish split, and the Rays might have even challenged the Athletics for the second wild card if they didn’t have to play Boston and New York a combined 38 times, in which they went 17-21. The Red Sox played in an intensely competitive division in which they completely changed the trajectory of two teams, finishing eight games ahead of a 100-win team. 

The Red Sox were dominant because they were top-to-bottom capable. Their 21-year-old rookie, Rafael Devers, was one of the weak spots in the lineup: he hit 21 home runs and 55 extra-base hits overall in 121 games. Xander Bogaerts and Andrew Benintendi were at the peak of their respective powers, Jackie Bradley Jr. managed to both hit and play his usual world-class defense, and part-timers like Mitch Moreland, Steve Pearce and Brock Holt all did their jobs as needed. J.D. Martinez proved a more than adequate replacement for the usual banner David Ortiz year, and 25-year-old Mookie Betts won the AL batting title while leading MLB in average, took home Gold Glove honors in right, posted a 30-30 season and won AL MVP while leading the majors in wins above replacement. 

Chris Sale was lights out, and followed in the rotation by David Price, Rick Porcello and Eduardo Rodriguez, who ranged from well above-average to excellent, then Boston added Nathan Eovaldi midseason. The bullpen was the only suspect part of the club, but it didn’t matter that much with Boston winning by an average of 1.4 runs per game even with a weak pen. And in the postseason, the Sox turned to Sale, Price and the lights-out Eovaldi to make up the difference in key moments for the pen, erasing that weakness when it did matter.

The Sox defeated the 100-win Yankees in the ALDS in four games, took down the 103-win Astros in the ALCS in five games, then toppled the 92-win Dodgers in the World Series for their ninth championship in another five games. There was very little drama that October: just as in the regular season, the Red Sox took care of business from start to finish.

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The 2016 Cubs don’t get any extra credit in the rankings for snapping a 108-year championship drought, but look at that roster and that season: they don’t need any extra credit, anyway.

Third baseman Kris Bryant was the National League MVP, and a deserving one, too, as he led the senior circuit in wins above replacement while swatting 39 homers. Anthony Rizzo could have been the star player on a number of other clubs, but he was “merely” the second-best player in the Cubs lineup. Dexter Fowler, Addison Russell, Ben Zobrist and Javier Baez were all well — well — above-average position players, and David Ross remained a magician behind the plate who also hit more than enough while at it, slugging .446 with 10 homers in just 67 games — a perfect pairing with rookie backstop Willson Contreras, whose bat was considerable enough that he spent his days off from catching in the corner outfield spots.

The rotation featured just as much depth as the lineup, with Jon Lester producing arguably the greatest season of his 16-year career — that’s saying something, considering that Lester finished in the top-4 in the Cy Young vote on three occasions, including a second-place finish in ‘16, and produced a 3.34 ERA with an average of 206 innings per year from 2008 through the Cubs’ championship campaign. Behind the veteran lefty was Kyle Hendricks, who led the majors in ERA at 2.13 but didn’t have the innings or strikeouts of Lester, so he had to settle for third in the NL Cy Young race. Then there was Jake Arrieta the club’s third-best starter who still managed to put up a 3.10 ERA over nearly 200 innings, and John Lackey, in his penultimate campaign, put up a season that numbered among his best with a 3.35 ERA in 188 innings.

The regular season was fantastic and all, but for a team that hadn’t won a championship since 1908 — or even appeared in a World Series since 1945 — that wasn’t enough. The Cubs brought it in the postseason, too, though: while the World Series itself went seven games against Cleveland, Chicago disposed of the Giants and Dodgers with ease in the first two rounds. And then they gave their fans something far more memorable than a 103-win regular season: a massive, come-from-behind World Series championship win. The Cubs were down 3-1 in the World Series to Cleveland, dropping Game 1 (6-0), Game 3 (1-0) and Game 4 (7-2) without putting up much of a fight. Lester led the way in a close-fought Game 5, however, keeping the Cubs alive for Game 6, which Chicago dominated, 9-3, and then we received a Game 7 for the ages. Late lead changes! A rain delay before extra innings! Rookie Kyle Schwarber — yes, that Kyle Schwarber — hitting the leadoff single in the 10th that would give the Cubs a lead! The first Cubs championship in well over 100 years! And the crowning of one this century’s inner-circle clubs.

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