1909 Chicago Cubs season

1909 Chicago Cubs
LeagueNational League
BallparkWest Side Park
CityChicago
OwnersCharles Murphy
ManagersFrank Chance
← 1908 Seasons 1910 →

The 1909 Chicago Cubs season was the 38th season of the Chicago Cubs franchise, the 34th in the National League and the 17th at West Side Park. The Cubs won 104 games but finished second in the National League, 6½ games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Cubs had won the pennant the previous three years and would win it again in 1910. Of their 104 victories, 97 were wins for a Cubs starting pitcher; this was the most wins in a season by the starting staff of any major league team from 1908 to the present day.[1] The 104 wins was the most by any team in Major League Baseball history by a team that failed to finish first—a record that would be unbroken for more than a century. The record was equaled by the 1942 Brooklyn Dodgers and eventually broken by the 2021 Dodgers, who won 106 games but finished a game behind the San Francisco Giants in the NL West.[2]

The legendary infield of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, Frank Chance, and Harry Steinfeldt was still intact, but it was the pitching staff that excelled. The Cubs pitchers had a collective earned run average of 1.75, a microscopic figure even for the dead-ball era. Three Finger Brown was one of the top two pitchers in the league (with Christy Mathewson) again, going 27–9 with a 1.31 ERA.

  1. ^ "Pitching Game Finder: From 1908 to 2018, Pitcher Won, as Starter, sorted by greatest Performances matching selected criteria by a Team". Baseball Reference. Retrieved August 29, 2018.
  2. ^ "Trea Turner wins NL batting title, Dodgers beat Brewers 10-3". Associated Press. October 3, 2021. Retrieved October 4, 2021 – via ESPN.