Another week has passed so let’s look at how the Cubs have been doing this past week.  Here are the last two team status lines.

Both hitting and pitching flat for the week which means almost completely league average.  League average gets a team to 81-81 for a season which is not playoff caliber.  They went 3-3 for the week which is also league average and maintained their +6 WAA.  A +6 WAA at the end of the season gets them to 84-78.  In 2006 the Cardinals limped into the playoffs with 83 wins and came home with the trophy.

Let’s look at top Cubs players.

Nine guys in the top 200 now which is good and shows that the Cubs rise as a team as well as play average as a  team.  Willson Contreras has suffered from the curse of being on top of this list.  Montgomery, Davis, and Exwards all suffered the week after being top Cubs player (not that they even knew they were on top).   Contreras may be out until the playoffs now which is a huge blow.  Let’s look at Cubs starters according to the roster.

Three starters in the top 200 and one in the bottom 200 who could easily climb out with another outing like he had last night.  Quintana is still pitching average but his upside potential is large.  The upside potential of all these guys is large.  Let’s look at the relief staff which has been carrying the Cubs all season.

The acquisition of Justin WIlson helped their overall value.  He hasn’t pitched many innings for the Cubs yet.   This is a top tier MLB relief staff even after having a few hiccups lately.

That pretty much sums up the Cubs for the week.  Now let’s reminisce….

Blast from the Past 1969

This is my favorite dead horse to beat and on this day in 1969 is around when the Cubs start their infamous collapse.  Here are your Chicago Cubs on this day in 1969.

Exceptional and well balanced pitching and hitting with hitting a little better.  Cubs UR is also extremely high which means they had good fielding by not letting runs score due to errors.  The Cubs were +30 right now which is around the record Houston has today, the second best team in MLB.  I just looked up LAN.  Holy cow!  +47!  But I digress ….  The Cubs were cruising. The Mets were +12 with bad hitting.  How could the Cubs possibly lose?

Here were the top Cubs players on 8/12/1969.

Ron Santo in the top ten at #8 and many of those names should be familiar.  I think I have all those baseball cards.  <Spoiler Alert!>  The Cubs go -8 from now until the end of the season while the Mets had some kind of epiphany and went +26.  “Stop crying in your beer Jack Brickhouse,” my father used to say late September of that year as he watched those final games.  If the Cubs would have gone +8 instead of -8 they could have won their division that year.  Oh well.  Water under the bridge and none of that matters anymore after last year.

If Ron Santo was playing today a +7.10 puts him ranked #3 behind Clayton Kershaw and above Bryce Harper.  The distribution each year differs and there were some good players back then.  Here were the top ten MLB players on 8/12/1969.

The Dodgers again with a top of the league pitcher.  Most of the above are in the HOF and this was Bill Singer’s best year of his career.  That’s enough beating up on the 1969 Cubs even though that season haunted Cubs’ fans for over a decade until the 1984 debacle replaced it.  That lasted until the 2003 debacle and then the 2008 debacle and then … no more debacles!  Whatever happens this season is gravy after last season.