Happy Birthday Willie Upshaw, Frank Catalanotto, and Chris Carpenter bluebirdbanter.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bluebirdbanter.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Cubs top pinch hitters, Part 1 By JohnW53 on Mar 17, 2021, 6:13am CDT +
Pinch hitting has not exactly been the Cubs strength down through the years.
In the 105 seasons since 1916, the first for which baseball-reference.com has batting splits, Cubs pinch hitters rank
20th of the 30 Major League teams in batting average (.223),
26th in on-base percentage (.302), tied for
22nd in slugging (.323) and tied for
24th in on base plus slugging (.625).
Their OBP is the lowest of any non-expansion team. The 4 teams below them are the Astros, Padres, Royals and Marlins.
The all-time leader in OBP is the Blue Jays (.326). The Rockies, second at .324, are No. 1 in average (.242), slugging (.385) and OPS (.709). The Rockies lead the runnerup Jays by 4 points in average, 28 in slugging and 25 in OPS.
An Encyclopedic 60-Man Honorable Mention to Complete our 2021 BN Top Cubs Prospect List bleachernation.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bleachernation.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports
Way back at the start of the offseason in November, the Mets signed eleven players to minor league deals, one of whom was right-handed relief pitcher Arodys Vizcaíno. Best known for his time with the Braves, Vizcaino is attempting to come back from shoulder surgery very early in 2019 season and has yet to pitch in a game since then.
Signed by the Yankees as an international free agent out of the Dominican Republic, Vizcaínowas traded to the Braves alongside Melky Cabrera in a deal that sent Boone Logan and Javier Vasquez to the Yankees following the 2009 season. That winter, Vizcaínomade his first appearances on the Baseball Prospectus top 101 and Baseball America top 100 prospect lists, and he appeared on both of those lists in each of the three seasons that followed.
The most memorable walkoff wins in Cubs history, Part 3: NL expansion teams
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Photo by Jon Durr/Getty Images
In Part 2 of this series, we looked at memorable walkoff wins since 1916 that the Cubs have had against the seven original National League ballclubs. Today, we’ll have a look at the eight NL expansion teams (The Brewers, of course, came to the NL when the AL expanded in 1998).
The numbers, of course, go generally in the order the teams came into the league, except for the Brewers, where the Cubs have more walkoff wins than against the D-backs (who entered the NL at the same time as Milwaukee) because the Brewers are a division rival.