Anthony Rizzo compares current New York Yankees to 2016 Cubs

Anthony Rizzo compared the New York Yankees to the 2016 Chicago Cubs

New York Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo spent part of 10 seasons with the Chicago Cubs and, arguably, his best season came in 2016, when the Cubs won the World Series, breaking their 108-year World Series championship drought.

The Cubs traded Rizzo to the Yankees at the trade deadline last year and this weekend, it is the first time that the two teams played each other since Rizzo was traded. As a result, Rizzo spoke with both the New York and Chicago media before the Cubs/Yankees game at Yankee Stadium on Friday.

In it, Rizzo compared the 2022 Yankees to the 2016 Chicago Cubs.

Anthony Rizzo thinks the 2022 New York Yankees are very similar to the 2016 Chicago Cubs

The New York Yankees are the best team in baseball right now as they have a record of 41-16, which is a 116-46 game pace. The 2016 Chicago Cubs went 103-58-1 but Anthony Rizzo sees a lot of similarities between the two teams.

He particularly saw it on Thursday when the Yankees faced the Minnesota Twins in Minnesota. Gerrit Cole was absolutely destroyed on the mound, as he allowed seven runs on eight hits in just 2.1 innings. The Yankees were down 7-3 entering the fifth inning but they came back and ended up winning 10-7.

“Yesterday is a prime example of a championship team,” Rizzo said. “Our ace gives up a bunch of runs, and in the dugout it’s like, ‘alright, here we go.’ We can do something special, we have that team.”

Rizzo, himself, is hitting .220/.319/.483 with 14 home runs and 39 RBI. Even though his .319 on-base percentage is a bit low, with offense being down throughout the league, his OPS+ is 130, or 30 percent above league average. In 2016, he came in 4th in NL MVP voting after he had an OPS+ of 143.

Barring a catastrophic fall from grace, the Yankees will make the postseason and, likely, win the AL East. But the Yankees have fallen short of making it to the World Series in each of the last 13 seasons, let alone winning it. Perhaps, they will be able to turn around their drought this year and make it to and win the World Series.