Late Bloomers: José Cruz

It’s possible that Lou Brock’s inability to play defense caused José Cruz to get a late start to his career.

Let me first point out precisely how bad Brock was in the outfield. Being incredibly fast, the Cubs had tried Brock in center field when he first came up to the big leagues. Makes sense, right? Put the fast guy in the spot that requires the most range. The problem was that, despite his speed, Brock had less range than an average big league center fielder because he got terrible jumps and took awful routes to the ball. After a bad year in 1962, Chicago moved him to right field for 1963, and he was actually pretty good there. He led all right fielders in range factor and double plays, and recorded 17 assists. It looked like he might settle there.

Unfortunately for the Cubs, and later for Cruz, they made one of the worst trades ever at the deadline in 1964 by sending Brock to the Cardinals. In St. Louis, center field was already taken by Curt Flood, and right field was occupied by rookie Mike Shannon, so Brock moved to left, where he promptly led all National League outfielders in errors. Then he did that again in 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1972, and 1973. In three other years - 1970, 1971, and 1974 - he didn’t lead all outfielders, but he did lead all left fielders. He was an error machine.

In 1963, playing right field for Chicago, he’d been worth +9 Fielding Runs. His legs allowed him to stay above water for a while after moving to left field for St. Louis, but by 1969 he was a real problem out there, posting FR totals of -5, -9, -14, -13, -7, and so on. After turning 30 he never had another positive defensive season, but what could the Cardinals do? There was no designated hitter in the National League at that time, and even if they thought Bock would do less damage at first base, Joe Torre was already there. There really wasn’t anywhere else to put Brock, and he was still a positive at the plate and on the bases, so the Cardinals sucked it up and lived with him being a defensive menace in left field until he finally retired after the 1979 season.