Former Cub closer Bruce Sutter died this morning at the age of 69. Sutter, elected to the Hall of Fame in 2006, spent five seasons with the Cubs from 1976 through 1980, earning four All Star nods, numerous MVP votes, and a Cy Young Award. He was traded to the Cardinals prior to the 1981 season, where he would become one of the most recognizable stars of the game and a World Series champion in 1982. He signed with the Braves as a free agent after the 1984 season, where injuries would bring his career to a premature end in 1988. His career total of 300 saves is currently tied for 30th in MLB history.
Sutter began closing games for the Cubs late in the 1976 season, earning 10 saves before season’s end. When Herman Franks became Cubs manager in 1977, he had Sutter closing games from the get-go. Despite an August injury, he finished the year with a 1.34 ERA, 31 saves, and a 6.5 bWAR, finishing in sixth place for Cy Young voting and seventh place in MVP voting. In 1979, Sutter led all of MLB in saves, with 37, for the first of what would be four straight seasons, earning the Cy Young Award along the way.
Following that year, Sutter became the first Cub to enter the new arbitration system. The Cubs offered Sutter $350,000, an increase of nearly 50 percent from his 1979 salary, while Sutter asked for $700,000. When the arbitrator awarded the higher figure to Sutter, the Wrigley family claimed they couldn’t afford it. While Sutter put up another great season in 1980, the Cubs lost 98 games and, after the season, he was traded to the Cardinals for Leon Durham, Ken Reitz and Ty Waller.
Sutter still had one more important role to play in Cubs lore. In 1984, while still a member of the Cardinals, he was on the mound in the ninth inning of a nationally televised game trying to hold on to a 9-8 lead. Ryne Sandberg, at the time a young, unheralded second baseman not known for power, hit a home run to send the game to extra innings. After the Cardinals plated two in the top of the 10th, Sutter came back out to once again try to wrap up the victory. After two quick outs and a walk to Bob Dernier, Sandberg once again teed off, hitting his second game-tying home run in as many innings. The Cubs would eventually win what is now known as “The Sandberg Game” in the 11th and Ryne Sandberg was on his way to becoming a star.
It will be five months until baseball returns to Chicago, so I thought it would be a good time to revisit, for the first time in six years, the all-time rankings in both offensive and defensive categories for all iterations of the current 30 teams for the 1040 games I’ve identified that I have attended. We continue today on the defensive side of the ball with saves.
