The odds that Cade Horton could be rookie of the year have been getting better and better, and although Isaac Collins might win if the vote were today, Horton has become the favorite from a betting perspective. Meanwhile, Matt Shaw, with his 2nd half surge is up to 4th in the betting odds for NL ROY.
That piqued my curiosity about the last time the Cubs had two rookies do so well in Rookie of the Year voting in the same season.
I decided to go back 50 years, to see how many Cubs’ rookies finished with votes. They had 4 winners, but also several years where no rookie was good enough to get any votes.
1975 – Manny Trillo finished 3rd, playing 2nd and 3rd. He had at-bats the previous 2 years with Oakland, but not enough to disqualify him from rookie status. He was acquired by the Cubs with Darold Knowles and Bob Locker for all-time great, Billy Williams. He was traded to the Phillies in 1979, to the Indians in the Von Hayes trade in 1982, to the Expos in 1983, and came back to the Cubs in 1985.
1976 – 1978 – No Cubs (although Andre Dawson won the award in 1977)
1979 – Scot Thomson (not to be confused with Scott Thompson, from Kids in the Hall) finished 3rd. He was the #7 pick in the first round of the 1974 draft, but never justified his high draft pick. He had a -0.5 WAR in his rookie season, and only had one non-negative WAR season after that in 1982, finishing his career in 1985. Rick Sutcliffe finished first for the Dodgers that season.
1980-1981 – No Cubs
1982 – The late, great Ryne Sandberg finished 6th. My post about Sandberg can be fond here. Sandberg finished behind, Steve Sax, Johnny Ray, Willie McGee, Chili Davis and Luis DeLeon. The top 5 all had solid careers, but none came close to the achievements of Sandberg.
1983 – Mel Hall finished 3rd. Hall had a good career, but his rookie season in ’83, with a 3.0 WAR, was arguably his bet. He was tough to get rid of, but went with Joe Carter and Don Schulze for George Frazier, Ron Hassey and Rick Sutcliffe. In 2009, Hall was convicted of Sexual Assault, and is currently in prison.
1984-1986 – No Cubs
1987 – Lester Lancaster finished 6th. He was mostly a starter, and had a 4.90 ERA in ’87. His best season was 1989, when he had a 1.36 ERA as a reliever. He retired in 1993 after seasons with the Tigers and Cardinals.
1988 – Mark Grace finished 2nd and Damon Berryhill finished 6th. Grace, a 24th-round draft pick, became the best player on the Cubs over the next several years, and his presence necessitated the trade of Raphael Palmeiro. He finished 2nd to Chris Sabo of the Reds, who had a solid career. After 13 season with the Cubs, he moved on to the Diamondbacks in 2001. Berryhill was a decent catcher, but did not hit much in his final 2+ years with the Cubs before being traded to the Braves with fellow 1989 hero Mike Bielecki for Yorkis Perez and Turk Wendell.
1989 – This was the pinnacle season for Cubs’ rookies with Jerome Walton winning the award and Dwight Smith finishing 2nd. Smith might have actually deserved the award (as I argued in my post on the 1989 Cubs), with a long hitting streak and his batting average boosting his candidacy. Neither was able to carry over their solid rookie seasons with great MLB careers. And with only one of their good rookies from ’88 and ’89 able to translate early success into long-term quality, it’s no wonder the Cubs were not able to make another playoff run after 1989 for almost a decade. Smith passed away in 2022, and his son, Dwight Jr. played in the majors from 2017-2020.
1990 – Mike Harkey finished 5th. Harkey was great in his rookie year, with a 4.6 WAR and 3.26 ERA over 26 starts. He probably deserved to win the award, as his WAR was better then the 3 players above him COMBINED (Delino Deshields, Hal Morris and John Burkett) and his WAR was 2.3 higher than the winner, David Justice. Unfortunately, harkey never cae close to matching his rookie year, and bound around between 4 teams in his last 5 years, which included not playing in the majors in 1996.
1991 – Chuck McElroy finished tied for 5th – middle relievers typically do not do well in awards voting, but McElroy had an excellent season in 1991, with a 1.95 ERA in 71 appearances. He had been acquired by the Cubs from the Phillies with Bob Scanlan for Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams. The Cubs traded him to the Reds for some unimpressive players. He was traded seven times in his career, including for former star closers Lee Smith and Jesse Orosco. He ultimately played for 9 teams, and had a long a productive career out of the pen.
On a side note, two players mentioned tangentially in this post, Joe Carter and Mitch Williams, had a pretty memorable moment when facing off:
1992-1993 – No Cubs
1994 – Steve Trachsel finished 4th. He was part of the Cubs playoff team in 1998, and had several solids seasons in his 16 year career, although he finished with a 4.39 career ERA and 16 more losses than wins. This was another example of a player with the highest WAR among NL rookies, but he finished behind Raul Mondesi, John Hudek and Ryan Klesko.
1995-1996 – No Cubs
1997 – Geremi Gonzalez finished tied for 9th and Kevin Orie finished tied for 11th. When I first saw his name, I had completely forgotten about Gonzalez. He was solid as a rookie, and not so good in his 2nd season. Then he spent 4 years out of the majors until he joined Tampa Bay in 2003, when he had a really good year. But that was followed by 3 bad years. He passed away, tragically, in 2008. Orie was one of the Cubs top prospects, a first round pick (#29) in 1993. But after a 2.4 WAR in ’97, he was terrible the next season and was dealt to Florida in a multi-player deal that brough back Felix Heredia. He bounced around in the minors and briefly came back to the Cubs in 2002, but never returned to the majors after that.
1998 – Kerry Wood wins Rookie of the Year. More about Wood can be found in my post about the 1998 Team. Wood was supposed to be the next Nolan Ryan, but injuries derailed his career, including forcing him to miss the entire 1999 season. Moving to the bullpen extended his career, and he got 54 saves in 2 season with the Cubs in 2008 and 2009. But he decided to hang things up at 34 years old.
1999-2001 – No Cubs.
2002- Mark Prior – tied for 7th. As much as Kerry Wood was hyped, Mark Prior’s career might have been even more anticipated by Cubs fans. He was the #2 pick in the 2001 Draft (after Joe Mauer), and made his debut a year later at 21-years-old. He probably would have won ROY if he’d played for a full season, and then finished 3 in Cy Young voting the following season – although he had just as good a case for winning as the two guys he finished behind. But after the near World Series in 2003, Prior could not stay healthy, starting in only 57 games his final 3 years in the big leagues, throwing his last major league pitch at the age of 25. Prior wrote an interesting article about his career in Sports Illustrated in 2016.
2003-2007 – No Cubs
2008 – Geovany Soto wins Rookie of the Year. Kosuke Fukudome finished tied for 6th. After a long stretch of zero Cubs rookies getting votes, 2008 had 2. Soto had 87 plate appearances over 3 seasons before his rookie year, but his broke out in 2008, with 23 home runs, a 3.3 WAR and an .868 OPS. He would have double figure home runs in the next 4 seasons, but only in 2010 (where he was limited to 105 games due to injury) did he get closer to that WAR, also getting to 3.3. In 2012, he was traded for Jake Brigham, and spent his last 5 seasons with 4 different teams. Fukudome was one of the Cubs first big signings out of Japan as a 31-year-old, and he had a great start, hitting a game-tying home run on Opening day, in a game the Cubs ultimately won. He actually made the All-Star game in his first season, but had a .217/.314/.326 slash line in the 2nd half. After two pretty good seasons, he was traded to Cleveland for a couple of minor leaguers
2009 – Randy Wells finished 6th – Wells was an unheralded prospect, who was a pleasant surprise in 2009, finishing with a 3.05 ERA and 4.3 WAR in 27 starts. He is the 3rd example of a Cubs starter who had a higher WAR than ever other NL Rookie, with an advantage of 4.3 to 1.1 over winner Chris Coghlan. Of the players getting votes, 9 had a higher WAR than Coghlan, but he did have an excellent .321/.390/.460 slash line. Wells had a worse year in 2010, was worse yet in 2011 and had his worst season in 2012 in his last season with the Cubs and in the majors.
2010 – Starlin Castro finished tied for 5th as a 20-year-old. Castro was the best player on a bad Cubs team for several years, and then was traded to make way for Ben Zobrist before the 2016 season. He was a poor fielder, but hit for a high average with some power. He had several other good years with the Yankees, Marlins and Nationals, but after making it to NLCS with the Cubs in 2015 only had one other post-season run with the 2017 Yankees.
2011 – Darwin Barney finished tied for 7th. Barney was a great fielder, and won a gold glove in his second full season with the Cubs, where he amassed a 4.6 WAR with only a 76 OPS+. As with many successful Cubs rookies, his career went downhill after the first couple of years, and he was traded to the Dodgers, before playing for the Blue Jays in his last 2+ seasons.
2012-2013 – No Cubs
2014 – Kyle Hendricks tied for 7th. In a ERA of 100-mph throwing monsters both in the bullpen and starting rotation, Hendricks was an outlier. An 8th round draft pick by the Rangers out of Dartmouth, Hendricks was stolen by the Cubs in a trade for Ryan Dempster in his free agent year. He was masterful in the 2016 season, and pitched in the two clinching games in the NLCS and World Series. His contribution to the Cubs success in the Epstein era can’t be overstated, but is often overlooked.
2015 – Kris Bryant wins NL ROY. The Cubs held him down in the minors to control his service time (see more in this post on the 2015 team), but losing a few weeks could not slow down his rookie season. He actually finished 11th in MVP voting that season, with 26 HRs, 99 RBIs, an 135 OPS+ and 5.4 WAR. His next season was even better, with a 7.3 WAR and an MVP trophy. But he was another Cubs phenom who had injuries steal away what might have been a Hall of Fame career. He had good seasons in 2017 and 2019, but in 2021 was traded to the Giants in his free agent year for Alexander Canario and Caleb Kilian, two prospects who have not been able to succeed in the majors. He signed a huge deal with the Rockies, but has an aggregate -1.5 WAR over 4 injury plagued seasons in Colorado.
2016 – no Cubs
2017 – Ian Happ finished tied for 8th. I’m not sure Happ will ever be good enough for many Cubs fans. He is a multiple gold-glove winner and has been a steady performer for years. Sure, he did not hit the heights of many the players in this post, but he has been a solid hitter and great defender for years. He’s had double-figure home runs in each of his 9 seasons , with more than 20 4 times (and only 4 away this year from a fifth time).
2018-2020 – No Cubs
2021 – Patrick Wisdom finished 4th and Frank Schwindel finished tied for 6th, one of the oddest pairings of top rookies in Cubs’ history. They were both relatively old for rookies who were not from Japan, with both players being 29 years old in their rookie seasons, only playing after the Cubs had traded away most of the heroes of the 2016 World Series. Wisdom had been a first round pick of the Cardinals in 2012, and played briefly for them and the Rangers (with a minor league stint with the Mariners) before landing with the Cubs. Schwindel was an 18th round draft pick of the Royals in 2013, and played in the Royals system, with a brief call=up to the majors in 2019. He then moved on to the Tigers system and then Oakland, playing in 8 games in the majors there before the Cubs grabbed him off of Waivers. 2021 was a significant outlier for both with Wisdom having a 2.1 WAR and .231/.305/.518 slash line in 106 games, while Schwindel was at 1.8 WAR and an damazing .342/.389/.635 in 56 games. Sadly, neither could sustain the success, both dropping off significantly in 2022. Wisdom played through 2024 with the Cubs, compiling a 0.7 WAR over 3 seasons, doing most of his damage against lefty pitchers. Schwindel’s hitting cratered in 2022, when he was released. And neither has been in an MLB game since. But for a brief time, both made watching baseball in 2021 as a Cubs fan tolerable.
2022-2023 – No Cubs
2024 – Shota Imanaga finished 4th behind 3 very good rookies (Skenes, Merrill and Chourio). While I’m not a big proponent of pitcher wins as a meaningful stat, he did go 15-3 with the Cubs losing only 6 of his 19 starts. He is fairly old as rookies go, and I think most Cubs fans had higher hopes for other Japanese pitchers they were rumored to be involved with (Senga, Yamamoto and Sasaki), but he’s proven to be very effective in his 2 season in Chicago.
Hopefully we will be adding two more names to this list at the end of the season, including possibly a winner of the award.
Cubs in 7 
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