Uncensored Writing: The 47 Best Players from the 1998 Chicago Cubs

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

The 47 Best Players from the 1998 Chicago Cubs - #8 Mickey Morandini

8. Mickey Morandini
Let's get this out of the way. Mickey Morandini does not look like a baseball player. Some would say he looks like a stoner, but I feel he has more of a drunken uncle look to him, and no, that mullet did him no favors. But let me tell you something else about Mickey Morandini; the guy is freaking awesome.

Nobody had a more difficult job for the Chicago Cubs in 1998 than Mickey Morandini. He was coming in as the Cubs new second baseman, replacing a Hall-of-Famer, and one of the few bright spots the franchise had over the last 15 years, Ryne Sandberg. He had incredibly large shoes to fill, and taking one look at Mickey Morandini, you would not have expected him to fill that role.

The man absolutely crushed the ball during the first half of the year as he was hitting an incredible .327/.419/.449 going into an All-Star break where you could make a pretty decent argument that he was snubbed. Fun fact: The Cubs didn't have an All-Star on the team in 1998, because Sammy Sosa was nursing an injury so he was unable to play in the game. The most fun Cubs team in my lifetime didn't get an All-Star. I'm not mad; I just think it's funny.

Unfortunately, he faded down the stretch, hitting just .231 over the final two months. Still, he was the second most valuable player by WAR for the Cubs in 1998, but this list does not take WAR into account as you may have noticed from how unreasonably high Orlando Merced was.

Although he only had two hits in the playoffs, one of them was arguably the biggest hit of the entire series for the Cubs where he led off the inning with a single and would later score to give the Cubs their only lead of the series. Yeah, there were't a lot of playoff highlights.

Instead of mere competency, he was pretty damn incredible. Outside of Mark Grace, he was the Cubs most reliable player when it came to getting on base. He played a nifty second base in the field and gave the Cubs exactly what they needed when Sandberg left. He ended with a line of .296/.380/.385. He even finished 24th in MVP voting, barely losing to teammate, Sammy Sosa, especially since both players had their personal high in home runs that year - Sosa 66, Morandini 8.

It all fell apart for Morandini after 1998. In 1999, his line dropped to .241/.319/.329. He went back to the Phillies in 2000 and was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays that year to conclude his final season in the major leagues. A few years later I would meet him at a Cubs Convention, and he was very nice to my friends and me, so thanks for that, Mickey. He may have stopped playing, but he stayed in baseball, getting a job in the Phillies organization and rising up to be their current first base coach.