Lester thinks young Cubs are cocky, naive enough to repeat

MESA, Ariz. - No baseball team has repeated as World Series champions since the New York Yankees reigned from 1998 through 2000.

There are reasons, starting with the fact that a title-winning team's offseason is so short.

Jon Lester, a three-time World Series champion, thinks the Chicago Cubs have a few legs up on the situation. Young legs.

"The biggest positive on our side is we have so many young guys who aren't banged up, who don't have a lot of innings or at-bats," said Lester, who helped Boston to titles in 2007 and 2013, as well as helping to anchor the Cubs' rotation last year. "I think it makes it easier on them to rebound and come back and be ready to go."

In addition, the younger players might not be aware, or care much about the perceived difficulties in repeating.

"With our young guys, I think they're cocky enough and naive enough at the same time to just go out and play again and not really worry about anything," Lester said.

The Cubs return their main weapons, both in the field and in the starting rotation. Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and manager Joe Maddon are back to headline the youth-infused roster.

"That's a huge, huge difference compared to years past," Lester said. "Most of the time when you have a World Series, you have a lot of turnover the next year.free agents or trades in the offseason. With the Cubs' situation, that puts us in a really good position to compete again."

Lester was witness to two teams coming short when trying to repeat. The 2008 Red Sox lost to the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALCS. The 2014 Boston team collapsed and finished 71-91.

After the 2007 title season, "we went to Japan the next year. Everybody was just beat. It was hard to catch up to that season. In '14, we had lost a lot of the key players who had helped us win a championship," Lester said. "Every year is just so different. I don't think you can really put a blueprint out there and say, 'This is how you repeat.' I hope everybody has the same year they did last year. That would be really, really awesome. But that's not baseball."