This wasn’t a one-year project it was a dynasty. 29, after Cleveland’s 9-2 Game 4 win over the Cubs, giving them a 3-1 Series lead, the general fan vibe was sadness, but also positivity: After all, the Cubs were young, and they’d be just as good next year. Louis? (Alternately: Imagine how different Cardinals history the last five years would be if they never sign Fowler.) Do they go big on top free-agent catcher Matt Wieters? Do they explore even bigger trades? It’s difficult to imagine a team being more aggressive than the Cubs would have been had they come that close and fallen just short.ħ. Imagine those three on the same team right now.) But if they had fallen that short in 2016, can you imagine how aggressive they would have been? They still probably would have let free agent Chapman go - what with the walk-off homer he gave up to lose the World Series - but are they less likely to allow, say, Fowler to walk if they hadn’t won in 2016? Maddon’s famous phrase about Fowler was “You go, we go,” and if the Cubs had lost in 2016, would the Cubs really let him go to St. (A year after trading away Gleyber Torres. They actually brought in reinforcements, trading away Eloy Jiménez and Jorge Soler for José Quintana and Wade Davis, respectively. To their credit, after the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, they did not sit on their laurels.

2016 world series game 7 box score