Complete Offseason Guide, Predictions for the Chicago Cubs

They went on to win the next four games straight to win the series and go on to the World Series.

Beyond the personal appeal to Price, the NLCS beatdown the Cubs suffered also opened the front office's eyes to just how desperate they are for another starting pitcher or two.

As a team the Mets stole the second-fewest bases (51) during the regular season, while the Cubs were the ninth-best team at taking an extra 90 feet (95).

"He's clearly hiring very smart people to do very good analysis, and that helps him in every trade, every draft and every signing they do", said Andy Andres, a sabermetrics expert and senior lecturer at Boston University in Massachusetts. Stranger things have happened, but if the Cubs climb out of this hole, it'll be far more impressive than what the Red Sox did before them.

The Cubs are down 3-0 mostly because they aren't producing at the plate. But this was supposed to be our year.

The Red Sox spoiled that narrative and left the Cubs all by their lonesome by winning three championships in 10 years. But this time, we had an ace with postseason experience and a new manager (sound familiar?). We had a new closer.

"It was really windy, it was scary", Schwarber said.

Then came a prophecy. "We're good. We'll win tomorrow".

But as fans we weren't even thinking that far ahead. We just wanted to win one.

October 13, 2004, Game 2: Yankees 3, Red Sox 1. I feel like the fans - and just about everyone else in baseball - should be proud of what we did. Instead, Epstein refused to commit one way or the other, and ended up with this watered-down Moneyball stuff, or what I like to call Light SABR. That's all we had hoped for.

If the Cubs need a visual aid to remind them what progress looks like, it's sitting atop the right field scoreboard still, now encased in a Plexiglas case. Because then it's Jon Lester in Game 5 and Jake Arrieta in Game 6 and anything can happen in Game 7. Again, things looked bleak. The Red Sox trailed by two in the eighth. Let there be more home runs that require helicopters to find missing baseballs. A sacrifice fly later in the inning tied it. Each big play, each crucial moment I watched between divided fingers covering my face in anxiety. The last time they won a playoff series was 2003.

Who were these Red Sox? A base hit by Ortiz in the bottom of the 14 sent the series back to New York.

It's a amusing thing, momentum.

So here it was: Remember that other team with a long, cursed history? It can be done.

Game 7 was a coronation.

As everyone may know, the '04 Red Sox were a special team (this is coming from a Yankee fan so it hurts to say it). Epstein's Red Sox remain the only team in history to come back from a 3-0 deficit. That had a nice ring to it. A week later, the 86-year drought was over when the Red Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. That came with an even nicer ring. Even though they finished third in their division, they made the wild card game against the Pirates and beat them to make it to the National League Division Series.

But on Wednesday, after the expectations and hopes had been inflated over time, it was a little hard to accept this is as simply a great start. "They know what they're facing". I trust that Jaime Garcia will be back and eager to prove he's better than what happened in Game 2 of the NLDS.

Enjoy it while it lasts, fans.

The Cubs have endured their share of agony and anguish. The team can go back after it next year, but this year wasn't not a "building" year for them. After that, everything changes. They too went reasonably big for a starting pitcher.

I would argue that in the case of the Cubs their postseason successes and failures are not the qualification by which fans should ultimately judge this team.

Any team can win four games in a row. Lackey, who shut out the Cubs for nearly eight innings in Game 1 tried to reproduce the same type of performance, but this time the Cubs were ready. He grew up in Maine rooting for the Red Sox and moved to Chicago in 2011.