Cubs “One Hit” Wonders – #3 – Travis Wood

Taking a look back at the 10 players who had one really good or great year in their career while they were with the Cubs.

Year: 2013
WAR: 4.5 (pitching only)
+3.3 WAR = 73.3% Improvement

Travis Wood was a starter for his first 5 seasons in the majors, but then only started in 23 of his 170 appearances for the final four years of his career. That can partially explain why 2013 was such an outlier for him, in terms of WAR. But he was REALLY good in 2013, for a dismal (66-96) Cubs team. He actually led the team in WAR over Wellington Castillo – and another catcher, Dioner Navarro was 4th. That’s how bad it was for the Cubs.

Wood was an all-star with a 3.11 ERA and 1.15 WHIP in 32 starts. I just realized I have not been including hitting WAR for pitchers, which normally would not be a factor. But Wood was also an excellent hitting pitcher. slashing .222/.258/.381 in 2013 with 3 home runs. He was even better in 2014, slashing .232/.271/.429, with another 3 home runs.

His seasons in 2015 and 2016 are an argument for not being on this list. He posted a 3.84 ERA as a reliever for the 2015 team, and a 2.95 ERA in 77 games for the World Champions – pitching in 9 games in the playoff run, only giving up 2 runs over 6.1 innings. However, his WAR in those seasons, according to Baseball Reference, was 0.4 and 0.6 respectively.

This is a case where WAR is supposed to be calculating player “value”. But is a player who pitches 200 innings and gives up 69 earned runs for a losing team 7 and a half times more valuable than a reliever who surrenders 20 earned runs in 61 innings for a World Series winner? Definitely not. At the very least, it strongly supports an argument that Travis Wood should not even be on this list.

But, purely from his pitching WAR, which is how I calculated how much of an outlier 2013 was for Wood, #3 was where he landed. Possibly time to re-examine my methodology.

Wood has come to the Cubs for Sean Marshall, and left after 2016, joining the Royals. He was involved in an interesting trade in 2017 to the Padres with Estuery Ruiz and Matt Strahm for Ryan Buchter, Trevor Cahill and Brandon Maurer.

Just a quick tangent: Ruiz was part of the Josh Hader trade, going to the Brewers, and then was the big piece that brought William Contreras to the Brewers. He has since been traded twice more.

But back to Wood…things did not go well after he left the Cubs, with a 6.80 ERA in 2017. He then tore his ACL in the Spring of 2018, and would not pitch again: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/03/tigers-release-travis-wood.html

Here are some of Wood’s greatest hits with the Cubs:

And one we all remember…

Here are some of Wood’s thoughts on 2016…