Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Broglio for Brock
Back in 1964 there was a trade between the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals. Lou Brock was trade for a pitcher named Ernie Broglio. There were some other players in the trade, they were inconsequential, then and inconsequential now. This trade comes up fairly often in blogs, lists, and books listing the worst trades ever. Ernie Broglio was pitcher that injured his arm and never really amounted to much and Lou Brock went on a tear, helped the Cardinals win the pennant (took a collapse by the Phils, but thats a blog for a different day) and helped them beat the Yanks in the World Series. He then went on to set the record for stolen bases (since broken by Rickey Henderson) and to collect 3000 hits. However is it really fair to call this a historically bad trade? The answer is no. When looking at trades to determine if they are really bad you have to look at what the GM was looking at during that season. At the time Broglio was a young pitcher who had already won 20 games. He by all account had good stuff, and looked like he would be a good pitcher. Brock on the other hand had never really been much of a hitter. On top of that he wasn't much of a fielder. Actually he didn't really have a position. At the time, weak slugging speedy guys were expected to play center. He didn't have the arm to play right field, and left field really needed to be reserved for guys that could slug the ball, but were weak defensively. Brock was considered expendible by the Cubs and given the sample so far, although he had hit the ball in the minors, that probably was not a bad call. The Cardinals already had Curt Flood in Center, so they didn't mind playing another speedy guy in Left, and in fact were just looking for someone to steal some bags. At the times in truthfully looked like a win, win situation for both teams with maybe even the Cubs making out better. No one could predict that Broglio would have arm issues and lose his stuff. Its not fair to judge trades with hindsight. Sometimes a deal just doesn't work out, its not the GM's fault and the Cardinals didn't have some magic 8 ball. Sometimes trades are just stupid and people get fleeced, and those deals deserve to be torched. But deals like this, which weren't really bad at all given the scenario do not deserve to be remembered in infamy.
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I wonder how much of Brock's success can be attributed to the philosophy of the Cards v. the Cubs. Were the Cards a more aggressive, "small ball" team back in the day and the Cubs a more station-to-station outfit? My gut instinct says they were (if, for no other reason, the difference in their ballparks), and that may have given Brock a home in St. Louis where he was a round peg in the Cubbies square-holed outfield.
ReplyDeleteOther than Brock they were not much a small ball club then. They somewhat built there offense around him after 1964. In 64, it wasn't his stolen bases that made the difference it was the fact he hit .348 .357.527. As part of the trade info I should have included up to the point he had been running alot for both the Cubs, and the Cardinals but he was not a very good base stealer. Got caught a high number of times. The Cardinals though, did alter the way they played after they got him, and dal maxvill and Julian javier both hit second a lot. They pretty much always had two strikes on them because they took pitches for Brock to steal. I think it was maxvill that made a quote when he was GM that he never had an at bat in which he didn't have two strikes as a cardinal. Other than Brock they didn't really steal bases, which is pretty interesting. The 64 team was more of a slugging team. The 67 team had 102 stolen bases and 52 of them were brock and the 68 team had 110 and 62 of them were brock.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. I guess in this case the player's unique skills drove the organization to change its philosophy, rather than the player falling into a situation already suited to him. Kudos to the Cardinals for realizing what they had and making the right adjustments.
ReplyDeleteStill I will always wonder, what could Whitey Herzog have done with Lou Brock. If whitey was the manager, then Brock might still be the stolen base leader.
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