When people think of the Chicago Cubs’ long run without a World Series they will often Billy Goat Curses, The Amazin’ Mets, Gatorade Gloves, Steve Bartman and any other number of bad luck excuses they can come up with. The story is that the Cubs have sucked, but it’s not their fault. The universe is against them, God loves watching the Cubs lose and some other such nonsense.

The truth is that the Cubs just haven’t been very well run and now they are. They’ve always had tons of money and they have always been able to do what they’ve done over the past few years, they just haven’t.

To illustrate this, I decided to look back at the past fifteen years of MLB. I chose 15 years because nearly every team in baseball has made the playoffs at least once in this period (everyone except the Seattle Mariners) and there have been a total of nine different World Series winners with five other teams making their first World Series appearance. This is the age of parity and the opportunity to strike has never been better. (more…)