As the 2024 season is on a collision course with its conclusion, it is time to start looking back and closing the books on the season. Unfortunately, the Cubs season came to a close several weeks ago. The playoffs are the goal for every team, but certainly for a large market team with a rabid fan base, it’s not crazy to think the Cubs should be a playoff team many more seasons than not.

I think the Jed Hoyer era has been one of the most conflicting of my lifetime. Having grown up with the Cubs in the 1980s, I’m familiar with team construction that was mostly wishful thinking. For most of my lifetime, the Cubs just hoped they’d eventually win some sports lottery and it would lead to a championship.

The fun part of those days was that when they did, more or less accidentally, put together a good team, they were surprising and super fun to follow. But also it felt like a chore to watch the team any time after June, because they were almost certainly out of contention already.

When Theo Epstein came to Chicago he brought Jed Hoyer and a number of other really smart baseball people to Chicago. For the first time, we saw cohesive strategies year in and year out. Even in these most recent frustrating years, you can see the cohesive strategies. The team is fairly competitive year in and year out. So there is definitely a part of me that embraces that. It’s good to feel like a professional organization because that wasn’t always the norm.

The reality is that it’s probably time for Jed to go. The team hasn’t reached the playoffs since 2020, a season that I’ve tried to eliminate from my memory. They haven’t won a playoff game since 2017. That’s just unacceptable. One could say that the problems predated Jed’s time as the President of Baseball Operations. But the reality is, Jed’s been here 13 years now.

In any organization, if you are the second in command, you have enormous responsibility. You are one of the last people in the room any time a key decision is made and you can’t just wash your hands of it by pinning it all on the other person. Certainly, the ship was already taking on water before Jed became the ultimate decision maker for the organization. But he owns the current state of things. That state is not good enough.

All of that said, 2025 looks to see the Cubs largely run with the same primary decision makers running the team for at least one more year. There will be some window dressing around some of the on-field coaching staff. But there just isn’t the kind of tectonic change that will alter the direction of the organization.

Last offseason, Craig Counsell was hired. I hope his voice is very loud in the room this offseason. That was a significant addition and it felt all too often in 2024 that he just didn’t have the horses to make the kind of magic we observed from a distance for years while he was in Milwaukee. If you are going to pay one of the premier managers in the league, you should let him have a lot of input on the types of tools that will make him successful.

2025 has got to be a significant step forward for this team. If not, the team needs more than window dressing changes. I like this group. I love continuity. I hope that 2025 is that significant step forward. And then I hope this team sustains and is a year in year out contender in the future. But that feels more like 1980s Cubs than the championship team that was being pulled together a decade ago.

All of that said, the 2024 season had a lot of fun to it. Today, we’ll look at the top and bottom 10 games for Cubs by WPA and also bring you the final standings for Heroes and Goats. In each instance, I’m going to go from last to first in case you want a slow reveal on these results.

Bottom 10 WPA Games of 2024:

• Kyle Hendricks, August 28, -.531
• Hayden Wesneski, July 13, -.536
• Adbert Alzolay, April 8, -.546
• Mark Leiter Jr., June 13, -.579
• Jorge Lopez, September 2, -.632
• Mark Leiter Jr., May 25, -.634
• Adbert Alzolay, May 3, -.650
• Hector Neris, June 18, -724
• Drew Smyly, June 24, -.799
• Hector Neris, June 11, -.814

For those wondering, this is pretty typical. In any given year, 90 percent or more of the bottom 10 will be pitchers and 80 percent or more will be relievers. Going back to 2017, not only the last playoff season, but the last year the Cubs had a pretty settled closer position, eight of these bottom 10 were relievers and all 10 were pitchers.

Top 10 WPA Games of 2024:

• Shōta Imanaga, May 1, .474
• Kyle Hendricks, September 28, .482
• Ben Brown, May 28, .501
• Ian Happ, June 4, .512
• Ian Happ, March 31, .533
• Dansby Swanson August 1, .573
• Nico Hoerner, April 15, .576
• Ian Happ, April 16, .609
• Christian Bethancourt, August 28, .667
• Keegan Thompson, April 15, .767

There aren’t any consistent trends in top games and they aren’t necessarily predictors of results. These do end up being some of the more iconic games of the year.

With that, we get to the Rizzo Award. Once again, we roll last to first.

Rizzo Award Cumulative Standings: (Full Standings)

The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.

• Christopher Morel -20.5
• Isaac Paredes -14
• Miles Mastrobuoni -12
• Patrick Wisdom -11
• Jordan Wicks -10.5
• Adbert Alzolay -10
• Miguel Amaya -10
• Drew Smyly -8.5
• Dansby Swanson -8
• Kyle Hendricks -8
• Pete Crow-Armstrong -6.5
• Matt Mervis -6
• Tomas Nido -6
• Hector Neris -5.5
• Colton Brewer -5
• Julian Merryweather -5
• Michael Busch -4.5
• Yan Gomes -4
• Nico Hoerner -3.5
• Hayden Wesneski -3.5
• Alexander Canario -3
• Nick Madrigal -3
• Hunter Bigge -1
• Trey Wingenter -1
• Jack Neely -1
• Kevin Alcantara -1
• Shawn Armstrong 0
• Jose Cuas 0
• Daniel Palencia 0
• Caleb Kilian 0
• Luke Little +1
• Richard Lovelady +1
• Yency Almonte +1
• Luis Vasquez +1
• David Bote +1.5
• Ian Happ +1.5
• Cody Bellinger +1.5
• Keegan Thompson +2.5
• Ethan Roberts +3
• Mike Tauchman +4.5
• Nate Pearson +5
• Jorge Lopez +6
• Javier Assad +9.5
• Ben Brown +11
• Mark Leiter Jr. +11
• Tyson Miller +11
• Justin Steele +12
• Christian Bethancourt +14
• Porter Hodge +14
• Jameson Taillon +18
• Seiya Suzuki +20.5
• Shōta Imanaga +23.5

A couple of things I found interesting in these numbers. First, 56 players appeared in at least one game for the Cubs this year and 52 appeared in Heroes and Goats. Second, the number of players that are within just one game’s worth of points (-3 to +3) or two games (-6 to +6).

For the first one, the four players that appeared at least once for the Cubs in 2024 and didn’t appear in Heroes and Goats. Those players are Enoli Paredes, Jesus Tinoco, Gavin Hollowell, and Garrett Cooper. Cooper, with 41 plate appearances and a .774 OPS, might be the player with the most playing time to not appear in Heroes and Goats in any way.

For the second one, 19 players are within one game’s worth of points. That’s more than 36 percent of the players who appeared in 2024. Thirty-one of them are within two games’ worth of points. The take away is that there is a lot of inertia towards the middle. My take away for that is to really tip my hat to Imanaga, Suzuki, Taillon, Hodge, Steele, Miller and Leiter for sustained and largely positive contributions to the team in 2024. Terrific news in that all but Leiter should be with the team in 2024.

One last question raises for me based on that last observation. WPA can be a fairly arbitrary statistic. How well does it sustain year over year? How did 2023’s top 10 fare in 2024?

1. Cody Bellinger 35 to 1.5
2. Ian Happ 21.5 to 1.5
3. Adbert Alzolay 18 to -10
4. Justin Steele 16 to 12
5. Javier Assad 16 to 9.5
6. Seiya Suzuki 11 to 20.5
7. Marcus Stroman 8 to left via free agency
8. Matt Mervis 8 to -6
9. Keegan Thomson 7 to 2.5
10. Tauchman 7 to 4.5

Conclusion? Just one player improved year over year, so hat tip to Seiya Suzuki. Seven of nine had positive seasons again. Steele, Assad, Suzuki and Thompson are all at three straight years of positive scores. Thompson actually has four straight positive seasons.

That’s all I’ve got for today, but expect more from me as we get into the offseason.