Chicago Cubs: The 2016 World Series core is officially gone

The night that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series is the most iconic night in the history of the franchise. That group ended a 108-year championship drought. Now, here in 2021, they have dismantled the whole thing a lot earlier than people thought that they would. It is a shame that it has come to this but the core is officially gone. There are a lot of reasons for it but the deed is done and it is time to move on.

It started when they moved Anthony Rizzo to the New York Yankees on Thursday night of last week. He was the face of the franchise for about a decade and one of the team’s all-time most beloved players. When he went, it was clear that a rebuild was on the horizon.

That was confirmed the next day when Javier Baez was traded to the New York Mets and Kris Bryant was traded to the San Francisco Giants. The three biggest pieces to their sustained success are now gone and aren’t coming back.

Chicago also traded away other good players like Craig Kimbrel, Andrew Chafin, Ryan Tepera, and Joc Pederson. Those guys weren’t there in 2016 but they were big parts of the team this year as well. It is clearly going to be a while before the team is good once again.

The Chicago Cubs are headed towards the direction of rebuilding for the future.

Bryant, Rizzo, and Baez all hit home runs in their very first games with their new teams. They clearly weren’t the reason that the Cubs weren’t winning. The team fell off because of bad decisions made by the front office over the years. Giving Jason Heyward all that money, trading away Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease, and being bad at developing players has been the biggest downfall to the whole thing. Now, they can only hope that they can start over fresh.

Heyward is still there along with guys like Willson Contreras and Kyle Hendricks. Contreras seems like he really wants to stay and be built around but we saw how that worked out for the other guys. Everyone is going to say that but Jed Hoyer is going to do what he needs to do in order to get this team headed in the right direction.

One spot the Cubs did well in has nothing to do with the World Series team. Craig Kimbrel was the best closer in baseball for the first half and clearly the best player available from the Cubs at the deadline. The Chicago White Sox gave up Nick Madrigal and Codi Heuer for him and now both teams are clearly headed in opposite directions. The hope is that those two lead the next generation of Cubs now that the 2016 team is all but gone.