2018 Cubs Heroes and Goats: Final Standings

Heroes and Goats does not do drama. So I lead off by telling you that Pedro Strop was the Superhero of the Year Award. If you are not familiar, former Bleed Cubbie Blue writer Russ La Croix started a feature in 2014 wherein he would look at the top three performers and bottom three performers by WPA. These came to be known as the Superhero, the Hero, and the Sidekick on the positive side. The Billy Goat, the Goat and the Kid on the negative side. Russ was less prone to fanfare than I am, so he didn’t call it the Superhero of the Year award, but he did track the full season standings for the 2014-2016 seasons. With a little help from interbret in 2017, I kept this going and then joined the staff officially for the 2018 season.

Here then are the five Superhero of the Year awards and their final point totals:

• 2014 - Anthony Rizzo 47.5
• 2015 - Anthony Rizzo 65.5
• 2016 - Jon Lester 51.5
• 2017 - Anthony Rizzo 38
• 2018 - Pedro Strop 22

There will always be a great deal of inertia towards zero. In theory, a really balanced score where everyone was less than 10 above or below even would suggest that the team was getting balanced contribution up and down the roster. When someone gets very far above or below zero, then it suggests that that person has either consistently come through or consistently failed to come through when they were in highly waited WPA situations. 2018 saw a lot of guys, as you’ll see below, had a number of guys contribute on the positive side. But a large amount of the negative contribution came from only a couple of players.

With those explanations, let’s look at this year’s players and where they finished.

Final 2018 Standings

• Pedro Strop 22
• Kyle Hendricks 20
• Javier Baez 19.5
• Jon Lester 16
• Anthony Rizzo 16
• Cole Hamels 15
• Brandon Morrow 13
• Ben Zobrist 11.5
• Jose Quintana 11
• Jesse Chavez 8
• Mike Montgomery 7
• Randy Rosario 7
• Ian Happ 6.5
• Jorge De La Rosa 6
• Steve Cishek 5
• David Bote 3.5
• Efren Navarro 2
• Alec Mills 2
• Rob Zastryzny 1.5
• Justin Hancock 1
• Cory Mazzoni 1
• Jaime Garcia 1
• Daniel Murphy 1
• Kris Bryant 0
• Luke Farrell 0
• Anthony Bass 0
• James Norwood -.5
• Terrance Gore -2
• Eddie Butler -3
• Jen-Ho Tseng -3
• Jason Heyward -4
• Chris Gimenez -5
• Tommy La Stella -6
• Yu Darvish -6
• Kyle Schwarber -7
• Tyler Chatwood -7
• Brandon Kintzler -7
• Brian Duensing -7.5
• Victor Caratini -8.5
• Carl Edwards Jr. -9
• Justin Wilson -11
• Albert Almora Jr. -26.5
• Addison Russell -42
• Willson Contreras -44

45 different players appeared in Heroes and Goats this year. Dillon Maples, Allen Webster, Duane Underwood Jr., Mike Freeman and Mark Zagunis appeared in games for the Cubs, but never ended up in one of the top or bottom three spots.

So there it is. We close the door on Heroes and Goats for another season. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I loved this idea when Russ started it and was a loyal follower before I started writing it. The next time I write, I’ll be looking at the biggest WPA events and games by individual players.