I have concluded which team will grab the second wild card spot in the National League: it’s the Chicago Cubs’ JV team. I came to this conclusion last week after watching Chicago roll playoff-quality opponents with its number four starter and two key relievers on the disabled list, and seeing manager Joe Maddon regularly give days off to his starting position players while mixing in bench players and recent call-ups from Triple A Iowa and fiddling with a six-man rotation.

The Cubs are insanely deep. They have no obvious and potentially fatal flaws. They have the best defense in baseball in a quarter of a century. They have the toughest pitching staff to crack in 40 years. They have patched the obvious holes in their offense from last year that caused them to get swept by the Mets in the National League Championship Series.

Chicago is so good that the question is no longer "Can they win the World Series?" It is this: "What on earth will stop them from winning it?"

Baseball being baseball, some unforeseen trouble surely lurks. But on paper, the Cubs will enter the postseason as the most prohibitive favorite to win it all since the 1998 Yankees. They will rank with those Yankees, the '89 Athletics, the '86 Mets and the '84 Tigers as the biggest Superteams entering the playoffs in the free agent era, and ones that faced the pressure that they should win. Each of those teams did, in fact, win the World Series. The Cubs will certainly be expected to as well.

Chicago is on pace to win 105 games. The next best team in the majors, the Texas Rangers, is on pace to win 96 games. Obviously not every club plays the same schedule, most especially those from different leagues. But it is very rare for one team to be this much better than the rest of the league. How rare? Let’s look at a half century’s worth of “best teams in baseball” and see how many of them were more than five games better than the next-best team.

It turns out there are only 12 of them over the past 50 years—and nine of them won the World Series.

Team Difference Outcome 2001 Mariners +14 Lost ALCS 1986 Mets +12 Won World Series 1975 Reds +10 Won World Series 2016 Cubs +9 (projected) ? 1969 Orioles +9 Lost World Series 1967 Cardinals +9 Won World Series 1998 Yankees +8 Won World Series 1990 Athletics +8 Lost World Series 1984 Tigers +8 Won World Series 2009 Yankees +6 Won World Series 1989 Athletics +6 Won World Series 1970 Orioles +6 Won World Series 1968 Tigers +6 Won World Series

Now you get an idea of why the Cubs are a Superteam, and they are not slowing down, not even with the JV players getting plenty of run in September. Among the last 34 starting pitchers to take a crack at Chicago, only three of them have won. Opposing starters are 3-20 against the Cubs since July 31, and 30-70 on the season.

Hey, you ask, what about the 2001 Mariners? Weren’t they the “best of the best” over the last half century? And look what happened to them: wiped out in five games by the New York Yankees in the ALCS. Aren’t they the best cautionary tale when it comes to Superteams?

Well, no.

The Mariners won a lot of games, tying the 1906 Cubs' major league record with 116 victories, but let’s be honest: Their starting pitching was not fearsome. Seattle ranked seventh in the 14-team American League in strikeouts by starting pitchers. The Yankees? Their starters ranked first. New York’s starters struck out 36% more batters than Seattle’s starters. It wasn’t even close in terms of which staff you would rather have. Take a look at the starting pitching matchups for the 2001 ALCS, which opened at Safeco Field, and it becomes clear that Seattle wasn’t the Superteam it appeared to be:

Game 1: Andy Pettitte (NY) vs. Aaron Sele (SEA)

Game 2: Mike Mussina (NY) vs. Freddie Garcia (SEA)

Game 3: Orlando Hernandez (NY) vs. Jamie Moyer (SEA)

Game 4: Roger Clemens (NY) vs. Paul Abbott (SEA)

Game 5: Andy Pettitte (NY) vs. Aaron Sele (SEA)

The Mariners never had a pitching matchup clearly in their favor. Simply put, the Yankees’ staff had better pure stuff, and that is what wins in October.

So what about 2016? Here are your NL rotations with the most strikeouts:

1. Washington: 847

2. Chicago: 780

3. Los Angeles: 766

4. San Francisco: 739

5. New York: 716

The Cubs can miss bats with the best of them. And now they have their own version of Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez: Kyle Hendricks. Why El Duque? He was New York's secret weapon. Hernandez was nominally the Yankees’ number three or four starter, but he was so good he could draw the other team’s ace and New York still liked its chances—such as in Game 1 of the 1999 World Series against the Braves, when he beat Greg Maddux in Atlanta. Consider New York's record in postseason starts by Hernandez from 1998 to 2001:

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