The other day, I told you the story of the 1975 Cubs, a team that had a terrific offense but finished far down the National League standings due to their atrociously bad pitching staff.
Here’s the tale of another Cubs club from about a generation earlier that had the league MVP in Ernie Banks and several other good hitters that contended briefly but collapsed due to a lack of good pitching.
By the end of the 1957 season the Cubs had failed to contend for over a decade and had just one non-losing season since 1946, a 77-77 year in 1952, when Hank Sauer was NL MVP.