This Chicago Cubs team, though – that’s something altogether different.

As the Cardinals regroup from 2016, the franchise’s first season without a playoff appearance in six years, and look ahead to 2017, the cuddly, blue monster residing just up I-55 from St. Louis looms over almost every aspect of their existence.

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It’s not just that the archrival Chicago Cubs won 103 games last year, beating the second-place Cardinals by 17½ games, and secured their first world championship in 108 years. They did it with a stunningly young core, supplemented by a top-five-in-the-game payroll. With the added revenue streams from a deep postseason run, another year of experience for that core and more young talent in the pipeline, the Cubs aren’t about to get any poorer – or any worse – any time soon.

What, exactly, are the Cardinals supposed to do about that?

The answer, it appears, is to ignore it, to the extent they can, and hope it goes away. It may already be too late for the Cardinals to save their kingdom, but focusing on the threat of the Cubs won’t help them to build the next one.

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“The fact is, there’s a core group [in Chicago] that has performed really well, and what they did last year was very special,” Cardinals Manager Mike Matheny said Wednesday at Roger Dean Stadium. “But also, we’re only one year removed from a team that won 100 games [in 2015], and we have a core group of young guys who are much better than what they were a year ago … I think we can compete with whatever [the Cubs] throw at us.”

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To St. Louis General Manager John Mozeliak, the Cubs look different than any of the previous intradivisional threats the Cardinals have faced. “They have far greater resources than the traditional Central teams,” he said. “They mirror much more of what you see in New York or L.A. … There’s a competitive side of me that is like, ‘Darn it!’ And there’s a side of me that says, ‘Well, it’s good for baseball.’ I hope that we can continue the rivalry, in the sense that we hold up our end of it.”

The modern Cardinals don’t do tear-downs or rebuilds, but around them there is a sense of a franchise in transition. Last season, Matheny routinely ran out a lineup with four 25-or-under regulars in it – outfielders Randal Grichuk and Stephen Piscotty, shortstop Aledmys Diaz and second baseman Kolten Wong – while also giving 69 starts to pitchers aged 24 or younger (Carlos Martinez, Michael Wacha, Luke Weaver, Alex Reyes and Mike Mayers). The 2016 Cardinals didn’t always catch the ball or run the bases well, but they still won 86 games, went 9-10 head-to-head against the Cubs and finished a game out of a wild-card spot.

“I think last year was the transitional year, much more than people realized at the time,” said veteran pitcher Lance Lynn. “It was more as if we were expecting more out of guys than they were capable of last year. Now they have a year under their belt.”

It may have been only coincidental that the Cardinals’ only major move of the offseason was to poach free-agent outfielder Dexter Fowler from the Cubs, replacing departed veteran Matt Holliday. And it may have been only coincidental that they announced they had extended Matheny’s contract by three years – on the day after the Cubs won the World Series. But taken together, the quiet offseason and the Matheny extension spoke to the front office’s confidence in the team it has built.

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“I do feel, from an organizational standpoint, our system is about as strong as it’s been in awhile,” Mozeliak said.

But if the Cardinals are truly in a transitional phase, one figure stands squarely at the intersection of the past and the future: catcher Yadier Molina.

Now 34 and entering his 13th full season, Molina has been around longer than anyone else on the Cardinals’ roster. He is old enough to have once caught Rick Ankiel. He has been in uniform for all four Cardinals World Series teams this century. He hit the game-winning homer in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 2006 NL Championship Series, and eight days later caught the final pitch from Adam Wainwright as the Cardinals closed out the franchise’s first World Series title in 24 years.

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“He’s the backbone of this team,” first baseman Matt Adams said.

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Molina also has a lot of mileage on him, having caught some 14,000 innings in his career. His durability has been remarkable – at least 110 games caught for 12 straight seasons, and at least 135 in seven of the past eight. Last year, when he turned 34, he caught a staggering 147 games.

But it is fair to wonder how much longer he can do that, and it is a question with massive implications: Molina is in the final year of his contract, with he and the Cardinals holding a mutual option for 2018, which means he could become a free agent after this season. Some have speculated it could take three years and $50 million for the Cardinals to keep him, and it is unknown whether the team would go there. History has not been kind to catchers in their mid-30s.

Mozeliak has said he has had preliminary discussions with Molina’s agent about a new deal, but declined to elaborate on that Wednesday. Either way, it is a situation being watched closely in the Cardinals’ clubhouse, where Molina is treated as the unofficial captain of the team.

“He’s El Capitan,” veteran third baseman Jhonny Peralta said. “I don’t think they’re going to let him go.”

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“I don’t want to say anything that’s going to get me in trouble,” Adams said. “But I would just say he’d be missed if he were gone. He’s got a lot of love and a lot of respect from the guys on this club.”

The Cardinals have always been admirably unsentimental when it comes to severing ties with their biggest stars when the time seems right – from Jim Edmonds to Albert Pujols to Holliday. But even among that group, Molina is different, his influence extending to both the lineup and the pitching staff, and throughout the clubhouse.

On Monday, when Molina walked out of the Cardinals’ clubhouse to join Team Puerto Rico in preparation for the World Baseball Classic, it was hard enough for his teammates to ponder life without him for just the next couple of weeks.

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If the period from 2001 to 2011 in St. Louis was the Pujols Era, what has followed is the Molina Era. But the next time Molina says goodbye to his teammates, It could be the end of that era, and for the Cardinals, it isn’t a given that there will be another like it.