Remember Some Cubs: The Delightfully Resilient Chris Coghlan

There are very few examples in baseball history that illustrate the whimsy of awards voting (particularly in the period before analytics was at the forefront of everyone’s minds) like Chris Coghlan's Rookie of the Year win in 2009. Despite posting less WAR (per FanGraphs) than multiple players, including future MVP Andrew McCutchen and the Cubs’ own Randy Wells, Coghlan won the National League award, likely because of his .321 batting average.

Although he was the 36th overall pick and a standout player in the SEC at Ole Miss, Coghlan never found himself ranked on any top prospect boards. He played in the Futures Game in 2007, but even with that, his emergence in 2009 was a surprise to many.

Sure enough, to say things fizzled out a bit for Coghlan after that would be an understatement. In over 1,000 plate appearances with the Marlins over the next four seasons, Coghlan hit just 12 home runs and had a .242 batting average. This poor offensive performance, plus the lack of defensive value, led to Coghlan being non-tendered by the Marlins after the 2013 season. The Cubs signed him to a minor-league contract before the 2014 season with very little fanfare.

Amid all of the hype and excitement of the major-league debuts of all sorts of top prospects over the 2014 and 2015 seasons for the Cubs, Coghlan was one of the lone, stable veterans of the group. In 935 plate appearances, Coghlan hit .266/.346/.447, often finding himself hitting near the top of the lineup. He worked patient at-bats, drew walks, and generally was a very productive player.

According to FanGraphs, Coghlan had the fourth-most WAR among offensive players for the 2014 Cubs, and the third-most in the 2015 season. Only Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo finished with a higher WAR than Coghlan during the Cubs’ coming-out party that second year. While Bryant, Rizzo, Addison Russell, Jorge Soler, and Kyle Schwarber rightly got so much hype during that season, there was Coghlan, quietly producing in the middle of the lineup and helping the Cubs make the playoffs for the first time since 2008.

After the signing of Jason Heyward and the decision to bring Dexter Fowler back that offseason, the Cubs were looking at a starting outfield of Kyle Schwarber, Dexter Fowler, and Jason Heyward--not to mention, they still had Jorge Soler on the roster, and Ben Zobrist had the versatility to move into an outfield corner if necessary. Coghlan was the odd man out, and thus was traded unceremoniously to the Oakland Athletics for Aaron Brooks, who never pitched in a big league game for the Cubs. The news of that trade broke just minutes before Theo Epstein and Fowler made their dramatic entrance at the team's spring-training complex.

However, as some may recall, that was not all for Coghlan in a Cubs uniform. With Schwarber out for the season (or, as we know now, until the World Series) with a knee injury, the Cubs traded Arismendy Alcantara to the Athletics for Coghlan in June. He never quite regained his previous form, but he still hit a slightly above-average .252/.391/.388 line in 128 plate appearances for the Cubs the rest of that glorious year.

While he would only end up receiving three plate appearances in the entire series, Coghlan was the World Series Game One starter for the Cubs in right field, which is a trivia question I think many Cubs fans would get wrong. Obviously, Coghlan has a World Series ring with the Cubs, but really, it’s his production in the two years beforehand that he should be remembered for. 

Coghlan would go on to play in just 36 games for the Toronto Blue Jays in the 2017 season, where he was perhaps better known for this slide than his overall batting line of .200/.299/.267, and he never played in the major leagues again.

Only 14 other players who won the Rookie of the Year Award went on to post a lower career WAR than Coghlan's. All of this is to say that Coghlan, likely, is one of the most forgotten Rookies of the Year in MLB history. But he shouldn’t be remembered for that award, at least not by Cubs fans.

I fear that many have forgotten him, but for two seasons, he helped usher in a new era of Cubs baseball--one that would lead to the first World Series win in over 100 years. He posted 5.5 WAR over those two seasons, and was one of their most valuable position players and one of their best and most consistent hitters during a period when the younger guys got all of the hype. He even started Game One of the World Series for them. For all of that, we should not forget him. 

Are you interested in Cubs history? Then check out the Chicago Cubs Players Project, a community-driven project to discover and collect great information on every player to wear a Cubs uniform!