NL Central team resembles post-2008 champion Phillies

MLB experts argue the Cubs should avoid what the Phillies did.

“We have not been able to extend a lot of these players to extend that window,” Cubs president Jed Hoyer added to reporters on Wednesday, citing the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees as examples to follow, while calling out the Phillies and Detroit Tigers as teams who “missed those opportunities to reset.”

“So with that, we know that we’re coming to the end of this group of players,” Hoyer continued. “A wildly successful, franchise-changing run with this group of players — we’re coming to the end.”

But, when exactly is that end for the Cubs? MLB Network’s Brian Kenny and Dan Plesac believe it is in their best interest to rebuild and completely part ways with stars from their 2016 team, now. “Everybody has gone their way out, what do you do? We all say, ‘Yea, ride it to the end.’ Well, this is what it looks like at the end,” Kenny said on Wednesday.

Plesac compared this offseason’s Cubs to what the Phillies went through with Utley, Howard, and Rollins after their 2007-11 run. “You want to hang [onto] them for one more year. The seats are filled, and there is a buzz and electricity,” he said. “But then comes the time when you have to pay the piper.”

“What is amazing to me, after the 2016 World Championship, it looked like this organization was built for the NL Central to go through the Cubs for four to five years,” Plesac continued. “It is amazing how quickly that flipped and they are in transition.”

It is not clear what direction the Cubs are exactly headed, but, to be frank, neither is the Phillies’ direction. If the Cubs want to avoid the seemingly never-ending rebuild that the Phillies have been in, it might be in their best interest to listen to Kenny and Plesac.