The Cubs won 98 games in 1929, winning the NL pennant by 10½ games over the Pirates. They took over first place to stay in late July and at that point had a 17-2 run that made the race not close; at one point in September they led by 14 games before coasting home.

It was the Cubs' first pennant in 11 years. They lost the World Series to the A's, but it easily could have gone the other way. They blew an 8-0 lead in the seventh inning in Game 4 and led Game 5 by 2-0 in the bottom of the ninth before losing that game, and the Series.

Perhaps as a result of that great year, the Cubs made no player-for-player deals in 1929. Here are a few non-trade transactions the Cubs made in '29.

Schulte had played briefly for the Browns in 1923, then in the independent minor leagues for a few seasons before he was in the Cardinals and Phillies organizations. It was from the Phillies that the Cubs got Schulte, then on the Columbus (American Association) roster.

He was 32 by this time and played in just 31 games for the Cubs, batting .261/.329/.304. In 1930 he was included in a deal whose purpose, as we saw in that year's article, was mainly to help out the minor league team with cash.

Taylor, a catcher, had put together several good seasons, mainly for the Dodgers and Braves, earlier in the 1920s. By '29 he was nearing the end of the line, but the Cubs needed a catcher, as Gabby Hartnett suffered from some sort of mysterious illness that year and played in only 25 games, just one as a catcher. Taylor batted .274/.336/.391 in 64 games and went 3-for-17 in the World Series. That isn't terrible, but it wasn't what Hartnett was providing up to that year. It's a reasonable question to ask: Would the Cubs have won the World Series with a healthy Hartnett?

Taylor played in 141 games in five Cubs seasons and was basically replacement level (-0.5 bWAR).

Here are the rules that were in place for the Rule 5 Draft in 1929:

Before the rules recognized affiliated farm systems in 1931, big league teams made their picks solely from Minor League teams, all of which operated in independent leagues. Initially, a pick cost either $500 or $1,000, depending on the level of the player's league. Both the acquisition costs and the Draft period changed numerous times over the next century, with the term "Rule 5" first appearing no later than in the 1941 edition of the Major League rules.

So the Cubs acquired Shealy and lost Webb by these rules.

This was a major mistake. Shealy, who was 29 at the time of this draft and having not pitched all that well in the minor leagues, posted an 8.00 ERA in 24 relief appearances for the Cubs in 1930, then never played in the majors again.

You might recognize Earl Webb's name. That's because he holds the MLB single-season record for doubles. He hit 67 with the Red Sox in 1931. He never did play for the Reds, but did put up two very good years in Boston in 1930 and 1931. At that point he was 34 and his career began to decline.

But you can see how he might have been a help to the Cubs in those two seasons.

Webb's SABR biography details how all those doubles were hit:

His splits are worth looking at. Most of his doubles were hit at home - 39 of the 67. Of those, 33 were hit at Fenway Park, and six were hit at Braves Field, where the Red Sox played all of their Sunday home games because of an old Blue Law forbidding playing baseball near a church. The doubles on the road were fairly evenly distributed; the six hit at Yankee Stadium were the most in any one ballpark outside Boston.

Was Webb's mind on second base? He led the league in errors at his position, 16. He'd made nine the year before, and 11 the year after; though he did play many more games in 1931 than in either of the seasons before or after, it was still a statistically significant increase, albeit with rather small numbers. Shano Collins said, "The reason he hits so many doubles is that he's hitting a long, hard ball this year and he's too darned slow on the bases to get to third."

Webb died in 1965, aged... 67.

Here's another situation where the Cubs hoped a guy who'd been good a few years earlier could recover his previous ability. Bell, a third baseman, had some good years for the Cardinals earlier in the '20s, particularly 1926, when he hit .325/.383/.518 (4.6 bWAR) with 17 home runs and 100 RBI.

Four years later? Not so much. Bell batted .280/.337/.418 with nine home runs in 149 games for the Cubs in 1930 and 1931, then the Cubs shipped him back to the minors for cash.

The Cubs didn't get much from these deals so I'll grade them "B".

This series will take a break over the holidays and resume Thursday, Jan. 2.