Countdown to Opening Day - 23: Cubs poised for renaissance in 2015

In this 30-day series, theScore's MLB editors preview the 2015 season with an in-depth look at some of the significant numbers - milestones, jersey numbers and general miscellanea - poised to pop up throughout the campaign. 

When the Chicago Cubs last celebrated a World Series championship, in 1908, polio was beginning to spread throughout the United States at an alarming rate. 

The crippling disease ran rampant for another four decades before Jonas Salk, one of history's most egregious omissions for the Nobel Prize, developed the vaccine that largely eradicated the virus. 

More than 100 years later, the Cubs are still looking for a cure.

Many regimes have tried and failed over the last century to reacquaint the Cubs with victory - countless players employed and discarded as the enthusiasm of the city's fanbase gradually morphed into a kind of morbid curiosity. Just as the Yankees share an intimate relationship with victory, the Cubs possess an equally meaningful marriage with futility. Suggesting that they're bad hasn't been an opinion, but a statement of fact.

Though different teams employ different methods to fix their ailing squads, a drought so profound - the Cubs haven't appeared in a World Series since World War II - demanded a radical solution. So when Theo Epstein took over as general manager following the 2011 campaign, the precocious executive (and architect of two World Series championships with the Boston Red Sox) decided the best solution was more losing.

For the last three seasons, the Cubs have embraced defeat with open arms. By trimming payroll and jettisoning almost every modicum of veteran talent, they routinely annexed the bottom of their division - a strategy employed to accumulate the draft picks most likely to yield future stars. Through both drafting and shrewd international scouting, though, the Cubs cultivated in recent years an asset base that quickly became the envy of the league even as Chicago's losses mounted.

Epstein's strategy began to bear fruit at the major-league level last season - the team compiled a 73-89 record, its best finish since 2010 - but his offseason exploits suggest a new era will begin in earnest this summer. After installing Joe Maddon as their new manager in October, the Cubs pried Jon Lester away from the rosy Fenway twilight with a six-year contract. Subsequent deals brought Dexter Fowler, Miguel Montero and Jason Hammel to Chicago to augment the army of youngsters primed to contribute in 2015.

Kris Bryant, the hulking third baseman who made minor-league pitchers re-evaluate their career choices in 2014, will be among them. So will Jorge Soler, the Cuban expatriate whose mammoth potential was manifest during his brief stint with the Cubs last season. Both rookies will play the entirety of the 2015 campaign at the age of 23.

Despite their inexperience, Bryant and Soler will comprise two major pieces of a revamped lineup that could enter some truly rarefied air. Between Anthony Rizzo, Starlin Castro, Javier Baez and the two aforementioned prospects, the Cubs could conceivably deploy players age 25 or younger at five different positions this season. Since 1980, only five other teams have had five players 25 or younger qualify for the batting title. None of those teams qualified for the postseason.

Though historical precedent doesn't look too favorably upon their chances of qualifying for the playoffs this season, it's tough to recall a squad so replete with such high-caliber young talent. The Cubs are even tabbed for a second-place finish in the National League Central by PECOTA, the projection system developed at Baseball Prospectus.

Shortly after finalizing Lester's six-year deal in December, Epstein stated: "The future starts in 2015." No reasonable person could chastise him for stoking fan support after several years of sacrificing wins for assets, but snapping a 106-year World Series drought is an entirely different challenge - the brunt of which falls upon some barely-developed shoulders.

And it won't be as easy as curing polio.