There is no real, tangible way to categorize or sum up how one season’s disappointment can be worse than another for the fanbase and the organization as a whole after a Cubs playoff exit.
At the end of the day, only one MLB team can truly avoid any level of disappointment.
The Cubs made it a win away from the NLCS last fall, losing in Game 5 in the NLDS to the heated division rival Brewers in Milwaukee.
Was the disappointment after falling short last year really any different than what the Cubs or their fanbase felt last week after the team scored just 1 run in the Wild Card Series against the Padres?
Maybe, but it’s hard to quantify.
[MORE: Jed Hoyer’s takeaways from the 2026 Cubs season]
But now that the dust has settled on the 2026 season, there’s one aspect of the year that stands above the rest — and why the playoff exit is so hard to stomach:
The Cubs wasted one of the greatest seasons Major League Baseball has ever seen.
Pete Crow-Armstrong made history in 2026, becoming only the seventh player ever to join the 40-40 club. He also put up 10.6 fWAR (FanGraphs), which, as MLB.com’s Mike Petriello points out, is one of the Top 35 position player seasons in baseball history.
As Petriello runs down, Crow-Armstrong was the game’s best defender in 2026 and was the second-best offensive player (slightly behind Houston’s Yordan Alvarez).
“What he did was incredible,” Jed Hoyer said at his end-of-season press conference last week. “The best position player season I’ve ever seen personally. He’s going to win the MVP, he’ll win the Hank Aaron Award, he’ll win the Platinum Glove.
“To do all those things in one season is incredible and we’re just lucky to have him. Lucky to watch him play every day.”
It was a historic year that ended in … a single run scored in the playoffs for the Cubs.
The Cubs had the unquestioned best player in baseball this season and all they have to show for it is one clubhouse celebration at Wrigley Field after the team narrowly salvaged a series against a Marlins squad that had already been eliminated from playoff contention.
The Cubs came into the year with a stated goal of winning the NL Central. They finished 14 games behind the Brewers, as the gap grew yet again between the two clubs.
The Cubs came into the year with a stated goal of contending for a World Series championship — 10 years after the fateful 2016 win. They didn’t win a single playoff game, being outscored 12-1 in the Wild Card Series.
As the season wore on and it became clear the Cubs weren’t going to win the division, they stated a goal of wanting to host the best-of-three Wild Card Series at Wrigley Field, in front of a fanbase that made it a true a homefield advantage for the club last fall.
They entered the final week of the regular season in the driver’s seat to accomplish that last goal, but then scored 9 runs over a five-game stretch to fall to the second Wild Card and instead heading to San Diego for the first round of the playoffs.
Credit to the Padres fans for creating a raucous environment as they celebrated their team that tied with the Brewers as the hottest squad in baseball in September.
“My biggest takeaway is playing at home helps,” Hoyer said. “The system is set up where you don’t get a chance to come back [home] and play games. So when you lose homefield, you lose all the home games in that series, and I think that makes it really difficult.
“We have a real homefield advantage here. They have a real homefield advantage in San Diego. I think that that really hurt us.”
We’ll never know how the Wild Card Series would have played out if it were held at Wrigley Field last week instead of Petco Park. We do know that last year, Wrigley made a big difference to the Cubs as they beat the Padres in three games.
To be clear, Crow-Armstrong is not an innocent bystander in how this season ended up for the Cubs. He hit .192 with a .574 OPS over the final eight games of the season with 1 run scored and zero RBI. That included the Wild Card series, where Crow-Armstrong was 0-for-7 with a walk and four strikeouts against the Padres.
The presumed unanimous NL MVP didn’t come through for his team when they needed it the most — and his team didn’t pick up the slack, either.
It’s a tough pill to swallow given how incredible he was for the majority of the season. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles when a team continually falls behind their rival in the division, leading to the randomness of the Wild Card Series as the only playoff path.
There’s no guarantee Crow-Armstrong will be able to put up another season as special as 2026. He is only 24 and made incredible strides with plate discipline — and really in every aspect of his game — in 2026.
But it’s hard to project a 40-40 season every single year. There’s a reason it’s only happened seven times in baseball history — and nobody has duplicated the feat.
Ronald Acuña Jr. hit 41 homers and stole 73 bases in 2023. In three seasons since, he has tallied 45 homers and 46 stolen bases as injuries have limited him to just 251 games.
Shohei Ohtani become the lone member of the 50-50 club in 2024 but has only 31 stolen bases in the two seasons since.
Crow-Armstrong played all 162 games this year for the Cubs, showing remarkable resiliency and toughness with all the sliding and diving he does while tracking down balls in center field on a daily basis.
“The focus will be on 40-40 and those things, but the thing that gives me so much comfort — ‘cause I know offense can go up and down at times — is what we have defensively in him is so terrific,” Hoyer said of Crow-Armstrong. “The up-the-middle defense that we have is really kind of the backbone of this team. And he’s the biggest part of that.
“He does give a level of stability and comfort. I know he’s going to produce offensively. Forty-five homers and 41 stolen bases is a challenge to do every single year. But the standard he’s set defensively is really incredible and that allows us to build the kind of team we want to build around defense.”
The Cubs love Crow-Armstrong’s potential and how his elite defense provides an incredible floor, but it’s still impossible to expect him to put up 10-WAR seasons through the remainder of his prime.
The Cubs had a historically great season from their superstar center fielder. And they weren’t able to do anything with it (outside of earning a playoff appearance).
That’s going to — and frankly, it should — sting the fanbase and the organization for a long time.
