You know what's crazy? In the first half of 2018 the cubs hit .265/.345/.426(107 wRC+) as a team. That's 4th best in the majors last year behind NYY(.252/.330/.463 114 wRC+), Houston(.261/.334/.433 114 wRC+) and Boston(.272/.339/.462 112 wRC+) and clearly all of those teams have an advantage because of the DH. If you remove pitchers from that first half the cubs positional players hit .276/.357/.444 for a 116 wRC+ which was the best in baseball. In the second half of the season that dropped to .256/.324/.402(95 wRC+). They were largely fine in July hitting .277/.360/.432(115 wRC+). August they dropped to .258/.326/.419(99 wRC+). Sept they were .244/.310/.375(84 wRC+). It's even more interesting when you consider that of the 93 first half games Baez played 91, Almora played 86, Russell 85, Schwarber 83, Contreras 82, Happ 82, Zobrist 78, Heyward 77 and Bryant only 70. So, if you view Heyward and Bryant as typical starters they missed ~10-15 games each.
I know people thing it's a cop out to blame wear and tear of that horrid stretch in August but it certainly seems pretty compelling when you look at these numbers. Clearly something happened because you don't hit as the best team in baseball for 4 months and suddenly fall off a cliff like that if you're just "bad."
It's just really interesting to me when you look at that because it's easy to forget given the way the season ended that the offense was actually that good. In fact, it kinda gets lost in the shuffle but if you actually go back and look at the first 4 months it really was the starting pitching that let the team down quite a bit namely with Darvish and Chatwood being pretty terrible and Q being pretty meh. Given the way the pitching ended the season and with Hamels back and hopefully a healthy Darvish, the pitching very well could be a vast improvement over the 2018 team. If Bryant is back to being healthy and Rizzo hits like he should then maybe things aren't as bad as people would have you believe.
All that makes me wonder should they really spend the money if they have it on Harper? Don't get me wrong if they have money to spend certainly there's areas to improve but I feel like you could make a better team by spending it on the bullpen after looking at those numbers.
