{"id":868951,"date":"2026-10-03T03:12:55","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T03:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/868951\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T03:12:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T03:12:55","slug":"2026-cubs-heroes-and-goats-alex-bregman-wins-the-rizzo-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/868951\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Cubs Heroes and Goats: Alex Bregman wins the Rizzo Award!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hopefully you all follow along and have seen the Game 162 Heroes and Goats<\/a> and you already knew how the final standings ended up, at least at the top and bottom. Kudos to you if you knew by the end of the first inning on Sunday that Alex Bregman had likely secured the Rizzo. In reality, it was probably the second homer that did it. But either way, Bregman wins the closest finish in the 13-year history of the award.<\/p>\n

For a reminder of that history of this award, here are the previous 12 years of Rizzo Award finalists. Alternatively titled: \u201cTom doesn\u2019t make clearly readable\/decipherable charts.\u201d<\/p>\n

And with that, here are the final H&G standings for 2026. Bottom to top, the way it should be done.<\/p>\n

Heroes and Goats: (full\/final standings)<\/p>\n

At a quick glance here, Alex Bregman was obviously able to make the most impact among free agents, Pete Crow-Armstrong among returning players, Ben Brown was the most unfortunate of the injuries, Javier Assad the most impact of the Iowa shuttle players, Aaron Civale the most impact of the in-season acquisitions, Tyrone Taylor of the deadline day acquisitions, Bryse Wilson the most of the in season waiver wire pickups (and eligible to be on the Milwaukee Brewers postseason roster).<\/p>\n

So there you have it. It was a thrilling chapter to add to Heroes and Goats. We\u2019ve had a few boring finishes, but 2026 becomes the year of the last game being decisive and the smallest ever margin of victory. It is fitting and enjoyable to me that the two men most responsible for the on field performance of this team finished number one and two. That doesn\u2019t mean it is homogenous. There are a number of players near the bottom of the standings who I think are largely irreplaceable on this team. And if you go back up and browse history, some amazing Cubs have graced the bottom three in the past.<\/p>\n

It feels safe to say that PCA will emerge once again as the favorite to capture this award in 2027, but here\u2019s to hoping that Bregman keeps him honest again and that a few pitchers get more actively into the race.<\/p>\n

Thank you everyone for reading. Thank you everyone who took the time to comment. We tend to have a very insightful group here and I appreciate that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hopefully you all follow along and have seen the Game 162 Heroes and Goats and you already knew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[306968,363,99],"class_list":["post-868951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-chicago-cubs-analysis","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}