2012 CHICAGO CUBS: The Summer of Mediocre

We all know the 2016 Cubs broke the curse and won the franchise’s first World Series in 108 years. The team was made up of incredible free agent signings and a really good core of home grown prospects. But that’s not what we’re focusing on today… TODAY, we are focusing on “THE BEFORETIME”. That’s right, we’re going alllll the way back to the summer of 2012. AKA: Anthony Rizzo’s first year in Chicago. The 22 year old first basemen was acquired in the offseason for pitcher Andrew Cashner, but the Cubs struggled under manager Dale Svuem and finished with a record of 61-101. Rizz finished the season with a 2.2 WAR, which was good enough for 5th on the team. In today’s video, we’re going to talk about the BEST player on the Chicago Cubs that season.

These are the players that finished in the Top 12 in bWAR for the 2012 Chicago Cubs, and what a beautiful list this is. We know Rizzo wasn’t at the top, leaving 11 players. See if you can guess who finished #1?

I’ll tell you right now, it wasn’t Campana, Castillo or Matt Garza because those three finished at the bottom of the list. And I think we’d all remember if Travis Wood, David DeJesus or Paul Maholm was the best Cub in a season. So that leaves these five Cubs legends. Jeff Samardzija, Alfonso Soriano, Darwin Barney, Ryan Dempster and Starlin Castro. These five truly were the face of the Chicago Cubs at the time. Samardzija was just about to make his first all star team a few years later, but hadn’t blossomed into that guy yet. Soriano was a 40/40 guy in the past, but 2012 did not see that version of him. Dempster was a successful starter, leading the league in starts the year prior with 34, but he didn’t top the list either. Starlin just lead MLB in hits in 2011 and seemed like he could become one of the games next young stars, but never fully reached that potential and recently finished with a pretty damn solid career.

So that just leaves one player….That’s right, Darwin. Barney. Barney’s .254 batting average and 76 OPS+ elevated him to mathematically be the best baseball player on the Cubs that season with a career best 4.6 WAR, almost a full game higher than Ryan Dempster in 2nd. That leading WAR was mostly due to the fact that Barney tied the MLB record for consecutive errorless games at second base with 141 games. What makes that even more impressive is the fact that Barney was a shortstop his entire life. When he made his debut as the Cubs’ starting second baseman in 2011, it was just the 24th game he had played at second base professionally. The dude was a wall over at second base and ended up winning the Gold Glove on top of career bests in doubles, HRs and RBIs. If he just continued that mediocre offensive output the rest of his career, he would’ve a starter for a long time. Good for Barney for having a career year that season, but there is a reason that team finished with 101 losses and why most of you watching have never heard of Dale Svuem. Even though this current Cubs team is infuriating, I always feel better knowing our best player next season will not be Darwin Barney.

Thank you for watching! I hope you liked hearing these random former players as much as I liked saying them. Classic guy’s being dudes stuff. If you’ve made it this far, go ahead and subscribe to this channel for more Chicago Cubs content. It really helps out a lot. I love you guys and I will see you in the next video.

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