Chicago Cubs: What does success in Wrigleyville look like?

Joe Maddon’s historic run with the Chicago Cubs is over. What must the team’s new manager do in order to be hailed a success in Wrigleyville?

Before the final game of the season even began, the Chicago Cubs made their first move in what will surely be an offseason full of change.

After five years with the team, four playoff appearances, three trips to the NLCS, and a curse-breaking World Series win, Joe Maddon‘s career on the North Side of Chicago is over.

Maddon was at the helm of the Cubs during the team’s most successful stretch of all time, making four straight trips to the postseason and averaging 94 wins each year. Along the way, the Cubs won two division titles, an MVP, a Cy Young, and Maddon himself took home some hardware – the 2015 NL Manager of the Year award.

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For all the success that Maddon had on the city’s North Side, his tenure was rife with fan complaints about bullpen mismanagement, nonsensical lineups, and stagnating development of young players.

With fans’ expectations becoming unrealistically high after a dominant 2016 season, anything short of another World Series win was considered a failure.

In 2017, the Cubs seemingly ran out of energy, being eliminated handily by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS. The next year was even worse. A red-hot Milwaukee Brewers team caught the Cubs in the division race in 2018, winning Game 163 at Wrigley Field. The next night the Cubs lost again at home, this time to the Colorado Rockies in the NL Wild Card game. And in 2019? Well, let’s just try and forget how the last three weeks of the season played out.

Inconsistent play and faltering down the stretch plagued the Cubs in each of the last few seasons. Whether or not Joe Maddon deserves the majority of the blame for those things doesn’t matter anymore. Like it or not, there will be a new manager in Wrigleyville in 2020.

If Joe Maddon oversaw the team’s best stretch in its 144-year history and was still ushered out the door quickly, what must a new manager do to be deemed a success and have a long career with the Cubs?

The first ingredient to success in 2020 and beyond is consistency. Yes, the Cubs were one of the best teams in baseball while Maddon was the manager, but day-to-day their play could be infuriatingly inconsistent. The Cubs could dominate a series against a playoff contender and then look lost during their very next series against one of the worst teams in the league.

One of the biggest adjustments for the Cubs to become more consistent as a whole is to clean up the fundamentals. Sharp baserunning and stellar fielding were hallmarks of the 2016 Cubs. This year, they made the most outs on the bases and had the second-most errors of any National League team.

Another key area where the Cubs could find more consistency is in the batting order. After the departure of Dexter Fowler, Maddon was never able to find a regular leadoff hitter who could consistently perform. To be fair, the front office didn’t give him much to work with in terms of prototypical leadoff talent, but his topsy-turvy lineup management drew the ire of many, particularly in 2019.

Aside from becoming more consistent day-to-day, the Cubs were successful in nearly all areas of the game under Joe Maddon.

From 2015-2019, the Cubs ranked 7th in runs scored, 2nd in starting pitcher ERA, 3rd in relief pitcher ERA, and 4th in Defensive Runs Saved. The team’s five-year record came out to 471-339.

It’d certainly have been nice if the Cubs had been able to win another World Series, but expecting that level of success every year is just unrealistic. The last back-to-back World Series champion was the 1999-2000 New York Yankees. Since then, there have been 18 Fall Classics with 12 different teams winning at least one.

Winning a championship in any sport is incredibly difficult, but to be able to do it consistently year after year is nearly impossible. Being the last team standing is always the goal, but it shouldn’t be the only way to define success.

If making the playoffs in four straight seasons, going to the NLCS three times, and winning one World Series in a five-year window isn’t successful enough to warrant a contract extension, whoever takes over as the Cubs manager this offseason shouldn’t expect to stay for long.