Eugenio Suárez's hot start is providing a history lesson for Chicago Cubs fans

Cubs fans cringe when they see veteran slugger Eugenio Suárez step up to the plate against their team, knowing the odds of him hitting a bomb are pretty high. Suárez, 33, has been a Cubs killer for years, going back to his days with the Cincinnati Reds. On Friday night he hit his 33rd and 34th career home runs against the Cubs in his 127th game facing them. He is a career .269/.352/.540 hitter with 88 RBI and .892 OPS in 461 at-bats against the North Siders overall.

Suárez has hit more homers, hits (124), and RBI against the Cubs than any other team in his career, and his round-trippers against them account for 12% of his 279 career total. Most notably, he is the current active leader in home runs against the Cubs. Some of those long balls have been real backbreakers.

There have been a lot of Cubs killers over the years, from Mike Schmidt to Carlos Lee, to Albert Pujols. Many of them were Hall of Famers or "Hall of Very Good" players. Anyone born in the 90s or earlier can remember many of those 59 career home runs Pujols hit against the Cubs, and people in the 70s and 80s probably lost count of how many times Schmidt homered at Wrigley Field.

While Suárez is not quite yet in the top 20 in home runs against the Cubs, consider the 34 home runs in less than 130 games and 200 at-bats against them. Remember that guys like Willie Mays (most with 92), Hank Aaron (87), Mel Ott (77), Stan Musial (67), and Schmidt (78) played in either non-divisional or non-interleague eras. Among those guys listed, all but Schmidt faced the Cubs in at least 340 games with at least 1,300 at-bats.

Right now, Suárez is just six homers shy of Ryan Braun's total (40), which he accomplished in 193 games and 708 at-bats. So, in a little over half of the at-bats, Suárez is nearing Braun's total. He is not quite Adam Dunn, who hit 43 home runs in 139 games (472 at-bats), but he is not *that far off.

While he might not be the biggest Cub killer of them all, as mentioned before, he is among the very top active ones. Most recent ones we've known so long have recently retired, including the likes of Braun, Pujols and Joey Votto.