Cubs Trade Retrospective: Lou Brock

If Brock were alive today, he may have been kicked all over the league. Stop and look at his success rate. 307 CS!!! He got nailed 1/3 of the time! That’s a lot of killed rallies, and he never quite walked enough, with OBPs rarely cracking .360, and a lifetime OPS of .753.

Broglio had a couple of flaws. Low K’s and high BBs. But he had just come off two consecutive seasons of 11 CG’s, and his previous season he only gave up 200 hits in 250 innings.

Only two things to fault with this trade. Either the Cubs didn’t properly investigate his health, or the Cards were bigtime liars.

I wonder how long Cashner’s shoulder will last, by the way.

He’s a .257 hitter and he doesn’t walk!

… Also, in the future, he does get kicked around the league.

which allegedly was not disclosed by the Cards. But he had been a good pitcher and would have been a good acquisition had he not been hurt. Brock was fast but very raw, and a terrible outfielder. Terrible. Often broke the wrong way on flyballs. Brock was overrated, IMO, and the trade would have been alright if Broglio had been healthy. The real problem with that trade was the alledged concealment of Broglio’s injury.

in a book about Randy Hundley’s 10th anniversary fantasy camp last night (Sometimes a Fantasy by Jeff Guinn). He seemed to think he might have been the piece that would have made the difference in 1969. You might find this part interesting.

When I’d met him in 1991 while researching an earlier book, Brock told me he’d never believed the Cubs were a very special team.
“For the longest time up through my era, if you came into the Dodger, Cardinal, or Yankee organizations you had a tradition you were obligated to live up to,” Brock said. “The Cardinals, Brooklyn, and Yankees instilled the organizational pride, say, the Cardinal way of doing things which from decade to decade proved to be the winning way.”
It wasn’t like that with the Cubs?" I asked.
Brock laughed: apparently the suggestion amused him. “The first day I put on a Cardinal uniform I thought, Gosh, I’d better be good,” he said. “When I was with the Cubs I guarantee you I never thought about that.”

Brock seemed so thoroughly lost at the plate and for a non power hitter, his strikeout totals were huge. He made Felix Pie look patient and in control. This so clearly looked like a slam dunk win for the Cubs at the time, but someone in the Cardinal org certainly had to be sure that they knew a way to help him.

In 1964 his OBP in 231 PA for the Cubs was .300—which is exactly what it was for all of 1963. But in his 464 PA in St Louis after the trade in 1964 his OBP immediately took off and climbed to .387 with an OPS of .915.

Had they used sabermetrics in that day, I don’t know that they’d have placed a whole bunch of value on Brock—i think perhaps today’s metrics would have missed his potential. It had to have been that he was uncomfortable in Chicago or that a scout/coach had seen something that they knew was correctable. The guy finished 10th in the MVP voting that very first year.

A bad trade for us? Duh! But looking at the information available—it seemed like a steal.

Nice topic Al!

Ernie Broglio retired to the San Francisco bay area. There was an article in the San Jose Mercury News about him a few years back. He seemed like a really nice guy from the article, volunteering with youth baseball, etc. He talked some about the trade and its aftermath.

At first I felt sorry for him, as he described how the Chicago fans called him a bum and abused him. Then, he admitted that his heart was not so much in the game during those Chicago years, and I thought “maybe he was a bum”. After all, when fans use that term, don’t they mean that this guy is not giving them his best effort?

But today Lou Brock would not have been considered as great a player as he was back in the 1960s. He was a poor defensive outfielder,which was a big reason the Cubs traded him—he couldn’t play center field. He couldn’t really play left field either but he had to go somewhere. That made him a left fielder without power. He hit for a high average but he didn’t walk much except during his 1969-1974 peak. He stole a lot of bases, but he got thrown out a lot too and his net plus on the bases was pretty negligible. His career OPS+ was only 109, which is the same career OPS+ as Lou Piniella, Chris Chambliss or Torii Hunter.

Still, he did get 3000 hits and had three really great World Series, two of which the Cardinals won. At his peak in the late 60s, early 70s, he was one of the top 20 players in the National League. Maybe top ten. So the it’s not like they didn’t fleece us. I question whether he really should be in the Hall of Fame, but he certainly was an All-Star and a great player.

The one where we got him for nothing and the one where we got Bill Madlock for him.

And when Dallas Green made the trade for Rick Sutcliffe, the fans were worrying it was another Brock-for-Broglio.

I remember when the ’84 Cubs lost 6 in a row before the St.L. DH sweep, the fear was the greatest collapse was at hand. I really like reading enarga & others of my “era” who remember the real Brock. A player who made most of his fame in the World Series. I too, felt lucky to see guys like Kenny Hubbs, Santo & Billy at their peak, and guys who flamed out after promising starts like Drott, Ellsworth, Altman, etc.

One of the great lines in the writings of Jim Langford is

“No matter what else can be said about you unless you’re John Holland you didn’t trade Brock for Broglio”

That was 4 years before I was even born, my parents were newlyweds at the time. My Dad used to talk about that trade and how people thought it was a great trade.

One thing about the trade. While Brock would have been good here presumably, he might not have been as good as he was in St Louis a team built more for his type of talent speed than the Cubs were at the time.