Redefining a Dynasty

There is speculation about the status of Joe Maddon as he goes into the last year of his contract with the Cubs, Bruce Miles makes a Red Sox comparison:

Epstein still was at the helm when things went sour for the Red Sox in 2011. Even though things don’t seem to be going in that direction with the Cubs just two years after they won the World Series for the first time since 1908, maybe Epstein is fearful of things getting stale and the Cubs’ window closing just when it seemed it was wide open.

That might be one reason Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer have not offered and will not consider offering Maddon a contract extension until sometime late in 2019, Maddon’s final season of his five-year contract with the Cubs.

Over the last three seasons, the Cubs won the most games in the National League (290-196), but one World Series title. The Red Sox have won four World Championships this century, but they have been fairly spread out. The Red Sox, as noted above, had a few bad seasons around the championships, but the team has a great process in place for keeping the organization going. The Cubs have this, Houston has this, the Indians have this, the Dodgers have this, and it appears the Yankees have shifted to this model as well. So the Red Sox winning four championships in 15 years may be the new defition of a dynasty. The closest we’ve come to the old-fashioned ones this century were the Giants from 2010-2014, winning three of five. They did not make the playoffs in the off years, however.

The Braves and the Yankees showed the past and future in the 1990s. The Yankees won four of five World Series titles and three in a row. They are considered a dynasty, as it was known then. The Braves won the division year after year, but only one World Series. No one talks about them the same way, even though for the decade they were probably the better team. They had a great process for keeping the team good, constantly moving out weak players for stronger ones, often developed from within. That may be the only type of dynasty we see going forward.

from baseballmusings.com https://ift.tt/2yVgGBa