61-101, 5th in the NL Central

The best thing you can say about the 2012 Chicago Cubs is that they weren’t the 2012 Houston Astros. It was a rough season for the North Siders as they lost over 100 games for just the third time in franchise history. Given the bad news bears-ish-ness of the Cubs over the years, that’s actually kind of surprising.

The Cubs had a few solid position player contributors, but those contributions dropped off well before you got down the lineup and onto the bench. Alfonso Soriano (4.0), Starlin Castro (3.3), Darwin Barney (2.5), and Anthony Rizzo (1.8 in half a season) all posted starter worthy WARs, but no one else made the cut. On top of that, a lot of Soriano and Barney’s value came on defense, which is somewhat questionable given the Cubs level of shifting.

The long and short of it is they weren’t good enough on offense. Only the Mariners got on base less in 2012 than the Cubs. That’s just not a winning formula.

On defense, they were a respectable 9^th in the league according to UZR, but they were still a step or two behind the truly elite clubs.

As a staff, they were 27^th in baseball with a 7.7 WAR, but 9.9 WAR came from the starters. That is not a mistake. Their relievers were the worst in baseball at -1.5 WAR (cumulative difference varies because of innings).

Jeff Samardjiza had a strong year (3.3) and Dempster (2.1) and Maholm (1.4) each did well in their partial seasons with the club and Garza (1.2) was good enough in his 18 starts.

Collectively, this just wasn’t a good team. They can’t hit, they can’t pitch, and their fielding wasn’t good enough to overcome those two problems. Their total WAR actually over estimates their 2012 win total, but you would expect it to given how bad the bullpen was.

The immediate future doesn’t look too bright, but Jed Hoyer and Theo Epstein are at the helm now, so the long term prospects are much brighter. With the fan base and the resources of the Cubs, those two guys should be able to turn things around if they’re given time.

The 2012 Cubs were one of the worst teams in the league and they look to stay there in 2013. Anybody can have a bad year, and as Cubs fans like to say, anybody can have a bad century too.

2012 Grade: F

Early 2013 Projection: 69-93