A Sad History at Short

One website that I don’t turn to nearly enough is Bugs and Cranks (www.bugsandcranks.com). Their content is both entertaining and informative.

Earlier this week, Adam Goodson at Bug and Cranks posted a retrospective of Cubs shortstops over the past 15 years. In some respects, it makes for depressing reading. The Cubs have had some really bad shortstops during that time. On the other hand, it's exciting reading because it points out that there's really nowhere for the Cubs to go at the SS position but up.

I’ll let you read the names and analysis in Adam’s article, but here’s what the stats have looked like at the shortstop position for the Cubs over the past decade-and-a-half:

1992 .228 , 7 HR, 61 RBI
1993 .287, 4 HR, 54 RBI
1994 .278, 11 HR, 35 RBI
1995 .296, 14 HR, 69 RBI
1996 .211, 1 HR, 12 RBI
1997 .284, 9 HR, 41 RBI
1998 .219, 4 HR, 26 RBI
1999 .272, 15 HR, 43 RBI
2000 .276, 11 HR, 56 RBI
2001 .290, 10 HR, 66 RBI
2002 .248, 18 HR, 61 RBI
2003 .228, 20 HR, 59 RBI
2004 .266, 7 HR, 50 RBI
2005 .274, 9 HR, 54 RBI
2006 .254, 2 HR, 24 RBI

Of course, all of this may be moot considering that Lou Piniella has decided to insert Ryan Theriot into the SS position. Theriot was a SS during his college days and played quite a bit of SS in the minors before switching to second base. He’s been hitting well and he likely won’t field any worse than Cesar Izturis has so far this year. Theriot won’t put up big power numbers, but that won’t be anything new for Cubs shortstops. Over 15 years, the SS position has averaged just 9.5 homeruns per season.

I have lobbied for the past couple of years for the Cubs to get an elite SS. Someone like Alex Rodriguez or Miguel Tejada comes to mind. When they started spending money, my hope was that they would spend money on a SS. So far that hasn’t happened, but rumor has it that ARod will be opting out of his contract at the end of the year and is interested in moving back to SS. Just a thought…

Adam's entire article can be found here.