A recent Grantland piece attempted to counter long time worn baseball expressions like "pitching wins World Series," "you cannot have enough pitching," and "good pitching beats good hitting."
The author takes the view that the Cubs, by rebuilding their farm system with dynamic hitters instead of golden arm pitchers, are doing the right thing. The article fails to make the post-season point that "pitching and defense" wins championships.
Current case in point is the Kansas City Royals. In their current decade long rebuilding process, they have stumbled into first place in the AL Central not by hitting, but by the best outfield defense in the majors and solid pitching from starters and the pen. The Tigers have a powerful hitting line up, but fell out of first place when their starting pitchers began to get hurt.
Also, with the rash of TJ injuries early in the season, many teams were scrambling to find pitchers. Teams with pitching prospects kept them instead of using them as trade bait. The Cubs were able to get two premium prospects from the A's for two proven starters.
The article assumes that a great hitting team will take down an army of pitchers during the season and better quality staff in the playoffs. But the numbers show that even the best hitters today only get a hit every 3 out of 10 at bats. Home run hitters ring up a dinger maybe once in every 16 plate appearances.
To assume the Cubs are doing their rebuild "the right way" because it is different begs the question: if it is right, why are the other teams doing the opposite?
For every Clayton Kershaw, there are 40 Edwin Jacksons. There are only 4 aces in a deck of cards (7.7 percent) which is good analogy because even if every club has its "ace" Number One starter, that is 20 percent; but in reality, the bottom teams don't have the same type of dominate pitchers so overall it is really around 10 percent of starters are aces.
It is not to say that the Cubs were wrong in obtaining as many bats as they could. The team has been an offensive offense for years. Taking the best college hitter in Kris Bryant is what I suggested before the draft. Taking Kyle Schwarber was a reach for a catching prospect, but he was another top college hitter. But one must realize that in the first two drafts, Epstein and Hoyer took mostly pitchers - - - and none of them have panned out so far.
