As Wrigley Field was still shaking in the aftermath of the Cubs’ first National League pennant in 1945 years, a clear-eyed Dave Roberts saw the blunders the Los Angeles Dodgers made in the National League Championship Series, but also acknowledged that his team ended the regular season with a record 12 1/2 games worse than the Cubs.
“They beat us,” Roberts said. “We made mistakes. And you hate to have sour grapes, but the better team won the series. That's why you play seven-game series, and they showed it.”
The Dodgers took control of the NLCS with back-to-back shutouts in Games 2 and 3, with lefties Clayton Kershaw and Rich Hill shutting down a lineup that scored the second most runs in the NL (808) and led the league in on-base percentage (.343) in the regular season. But sparked by Ben Zobrist’s bunt in Game 4, the Cubs offense quickly returned to normal, scoring 10, eight and five runs in the final three games of the series.
What the Cubs did against Kershaw in Game 6 was described by president of baseball operations Theo Epstein as a “masterpiece performance.” The guy who Cubs left-hander Jon Lester said “might go down as the best pitcher of our generation” couldn’t put hitters away and was punished for the mistakes he made, with Willson Contreras and Anthony Rizzo blasting home runs and Kris Bryant, Dexter Fowler and Ben Zobrist driving in early runs.
Just having the the best record in baseball has hardly been a guarantee of playoff success, though. In the Wild Card era (1995-present), only nine of the 26 teams with the best record (either alone or tied for it) in baseball have reached the World Series. The Cubs are that ninth team.
“Up to this point, to the World Series, they have gone wire to wire,” Roberts said. “They win a hundred-plus games, they have really no weaknesses, and youth, veterans, starting pitching, they got the guy at the back end, so they catch the baseball, they can slug, they get on base, and they're relentless.”