Cubs All-Time Team v.2012

Today, we're taking a look at the Cubs All-Time team, version 2012.

Last year's inaugural team can be seen here.

In addition to our normal review (listening to our reader comments, updating lists to reflect current players and general overview) we'll be adding an infielder, an outfielder and two starting pitchers to last year's team as part of our roster re-vamping.


The Cubs have a very strong roster which includes Hall of Famers at nearly every position (thankfully, since our last installment, Ron Santo earned his due).  We had some tough decisions in the outfield and with the starting pitching but this one wasn't too difficult to iron out.

We agreed fairly quickly on Mark Grace, the 90's hit king.  Grace had more hits in the 1990's than any other player in baseball and spent 13 seasons with the Cubs.  Grace was a great player who was overshadowed by a lot of guys that got caught up in PED's; he's one of those guys that would have a stronger Hall of Fame argument if Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds didn't exist.

In the outfield, it came down to Kiki Cuyler and Andre Dawson.  Both players spent significant time playing with other franchises - Cuyler played 8 of his 18 seasons with the Cubs while Dawson played 6 of his 21 seasons with the Cubbies.  Their numbers were very close - league/park/era adjusted stats were within a few percentage points in most cases and both are Hall of Famers.  It was essentially a toss up with Cuyler winning primarily because he had a couple more seasons with the Cubbies and amassed more WAR than Dawson but I'd love to hear what a true-blue Cubs fans has to say about that one.

Last but not least, the starting pitching... we identified six candidates from which we would use to fill two spots in the Cubs All-Time rotation; Rick Sutcliffe, Lon Warneke, Claude Passeau, Charlie Root, Carlos Zambrano and Greg Maddux.  Needless to say, it wasn't an easy task.  Of the names nominated, Zambrano and Root spent considerable time relieving so we took that into account (leaving off the all-time franchise wins leader is never easy).  Sutcliffe probably didn't spend enough time in Chicago to warrant the nod.  Again, this wasn't an easy decision.  You can see the numbers in the chart below.

Check out our All-Time Cubs team below... 12 Hall of Famers (I'm counting Maddux because he's got one foot in) is right up there with any other team we've put together.  We made two pre-1920 exceptions (Anson and Brown) but both were well worthy of this recognition, in our opinion.

C - Gabby Hartnett
1B - Cap Anson
2B - Ryne Sandberg
SS - Ernie Banks
3B - Ron Santo
IF - Mark Grace
OF - Billy Williams
OF - Hack Wilson
OF - Sammy Sosa
OF - Kiki Cuyler
SP - Fergie Jenkins
SP - Mordecai Brown
SP - Lon Warneke
SP - Greg Maddux
RP - Bruce Sutter