The most memorable walkoff wins in Cubs history, Part 1: Introduction

The suggestion for this series was made in the comments a few days ago and ... well, I can’t remember who made it or where it was posted, but thanks! This series will examine Cubs walkoff wins, by team, and note what I think is the most memorable such game for each team the Cubs have walked off.

This will be a four-part series. In this article, I’ll explain the ground rules of what I found via baseball-reference’s Stathead search function and how many walkoffs the Cubs have had against all 29 other teams.

Or, rather, 24 other teams, because the Cubs have never had a walkoff win against the Yankees, Tigers, Red Sox, Orioles or Angels. Presuming the 2021 schedule is played as currently laid out, the Cubs won’t have a chance to change that list this year. The only team they are scheduled to play among those five is the Tigers, and the series is in Detroit.

Baseball-reference only has walkoff data as far back as they have play-by-play data, so currently I can only tell you about Cubs walkoffs going back to 1916 — not that those sorts of wins were called “walkoffs” back then.

So we’ve got 105 seasons worth of data. I’m going to first present the entire list of walkoff wins, per team, and then the other three articles will be divided up by teams this way:

Original NL teams (pre-expansion): 7 teams
Expansion NL teams: 8 teams
American League teams: 9 teams

Here’s the entire list, with the number of Cubs walkoff wins since 1916:

Dodgers: 89
Giants: 85
Phillies: 82
Reds: 78
Braves: 75
Cardinals: 75
Pirates: 74
Mets: 35
Astros: 27 (all as NL team)
Padres: 25
Nationals/Expos: 22
Brewers: 20 (all as NL team)
Rockies: 10
Marlins: 9
Diamondbacks: 6
Indians: 5
White Sox: 4
Royals: 2
Twins: 2
Athletics: 2
Rays: 2
Mariners: 1
Rangers: 1
Blue Jays: 1

Obviously, the teams that have been around longer have been walked off by the Cubs more often. It’s odd that the Cubs have multiple walkoffs against every AL Central team except the Tigers, who they have never walked off. In fact, the Cubs’ 9-19 (.321) record vs. Detroit is their second-worst all-time regular season percentage against any team (Yankees, 4-12, .250 is their worst).

Whenever possible, I’ll have video of the walkoff hit. Part 2, featuring Cubs walkoff wins vs. the original pre-expansion NL teams, will run tomorrow.