Bruce Levine: "Sox interested in Juan Cruz"

[WCSox]

Sure, Beane may want too much.  In that case, it may not be worth making the move.  But if Cruz is a "mental midget" then Thornton doesn't even have a brain.  Cruz has actually had some success in the majors, Thornton has not.

Cruz > Thornton.

 

Agreed. Cruz pitched reasonably-well in his first two seasons with the Cubs, sucked in the third year (injury?), was very effective in long relief in Atlanta, and then had a disasterous year in Oakland. He's inconsistent as all hell, but has had success at the major-league level.

 

If Mazzone could get a 2.75 ERA out of him, he has the goods and can be effective. I'm willing to bet that Coop could get reasonable numbers out of him.

[GoodAsGould]

Now I know that ST stats don't mean much, if anything at all.  But just for your comparison...

 

Juan Cruz's ST stats

Matt Thornton's ST stats

 

Im a little confused on what you are trying to prove.... Everyone knows of the 2 that Cruz is a much better player than Thornton. But Thornton cost us Joe Borchard who might not even of made our team and than would of been gone for free anyways.....Cruz the starting asking price was Brian Anderson, while obviously we wont give up that much you better bet that at the very least a Josh Fields would be involved.

[Heads22]

I'd be pissed.

 

 

As would I....beacuse the moniker "prospect" seems like 5 guys as of right now. I think the farm's been gutted enough. When people ask for the Sox top ten prospects....it's hard to find 10 up and comers. I don't envy Gage trying to pick 25. And he did 50 back in the day....

[Balta1701]

Im a little confused on what you are trying to prove.... Everyone knows of the 2 that Cruz is a much better player than Thornton.  But Thornton cost us Joe Borchard who might not even of made our team and than would of been gone for free anyways.....Cruz the starting asking price was Brian Anderson, while obviously we wont give up that much you better bet that at the very least a Josh Fields would be involved.

The Sox would have to be insane to move Fields before signing a long term deal with Crede. Moving Fields kills the Sox's leverage with Crede, and Boras's folks would know that immediately.

[SSH2005]

Im a little confused on what you are trying to prove.... Everyone knows of the 2 that Cruz is a much better player than Thornton.  But Thornton cost us Joe Borchard who might not even of made our team and than would of been gone for free anyways.....Cruz the starting asking price was Brian Anderson, while obviously we wont give up that much you better bet that at the very least a Josh Fields would be involved.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I wasn't trying to prove anything. That's why I said, "I know that ST stats don't mean much."

 

And I don't buy that Cruz would cost us a top prospect like Brian Anderson or Josh Fields, regardless of what that article said. Just my opinion.

[YASNY]

Cruz better not cost us one of our top kids. First, he's an ex-Cub. Second, he was with the Braves and Mazzone couldn't totally fix him. He may help, but he'll never live up to his potential, imho.

[SSH2005]

Cruz better not cost us one of our top kids.  First, he's an ex-Cub.  Second, he was with the Braves and Mazzone couldn't totally fix him.  He may help, but he'll never live up to his potential, imho.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Dontrelle Willis and Jon Garland are also ex-Cubs, well ex-Cubs' prospects.

 

And Mazzone did fix Cruz for the one season he was with the Braves. He just didn't continue his success when he was traded to the A's. But I agree, Cruz has been very inconsistent over his career and that is troubling. I wouldn't give up a top prospect for him either.

Edited March 24, 2006 by SSH2005

[YASNY]

Dontrelle Willis and Jon Garland are also ex-Cubs, well ex-Cubs' prospects.

 

And Mazzone did fix Cruz for the one season he was with the Braves.  He just didn't continue his success when he was traded to the A's.  But I agree, Cruz has been very inconsistent over his career and that is troubling.  I wouldn't give up a top prospect for him either.

 

They're not ex-Cubs unless they appeared in a ML game for the Cubs.

[SSH2005]

They're not ex-Cubs unless they appeared in a ML game for the Cubs.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Jamie Moyer was drafted by the Cubs and also pitched for them and he's still pretty good at the age of 43. And that Derrek Lee guy -- he's not so bad either. Not to mention Carlos Zambrano and Aramis Ramirez.

[Guest JimH]

And I don't buy that Cruz would cost us a top prospect like Brian Anderson or Josh Fields, regardless of what that article said.  Just my opinion.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Agree completely. There are a lot of players available right now all around both leagues.

[YASNY]

The ex-Cub factor has been around awhile. Just saying.

 

The Ex-Cub Factor: Theory will Decide World Series winner

By Ron Berler

 

(Originally published in The Boston Herald, 15 October 1981)

 

According to The Baseball Encyclopedia, 600 men have called themselves Cubs since the team last won a pennant in 1945. Five of them -- outfielders Oscar Gamble and Bobby Murcer, pitchers Dave LaRoche and Rick Reuschel and catcher Barry Foote -- are currently New York Yankees.

 

This seems a trivial observation, but it will spell the Yankees' doom should they reach the World Series. According to The Ex-Cub Factor, it is utterly impossible for a team with three or more ex-Cubs to win the series.

 

No doubt this comes as startling news to the betting public: Behind every major failure in the sport stands a Chicago Cub.

 

It's no secret that Cubs have always been "different" from other major leaguers. In fact, some say that the Cubs are the Moonies of baseball, that the ballclub possesses eerie, bewitching powers over its players.

 

"It's hard to put a finger on it," says Jim Brosnan, a writer who once pitched for the Cubs, during a contemplative moment. "You have to have a certain dullness of mind and sprit to play here. I went though psychoanalysis, and that halped me deal with my Cubness."

 

"Cubness" is a term one encounters again and again when speaking with ex-Cubs. It is synonymous with the rankest sort of abjext failure, and is a condition chronic among all Cubs, past and present. It is employed here because conventional language, such as "bad" and "hideous," does not sufficiently describe a team which has lost thirty-six pennants in a row, and whose fans have resorted to T-shirts which read, "Cub fever -- catch it...and die."

 

"I had to be de-Cubbed," admits Pete LaCock, who escaped the team in 1976. "When you play with the Cubs, it's like playing with heavy shoes on."

 

LaCock, like other ex-Cubs, speaks with unaccustomed confidence now that he is free of his former teammates. He sees himself as a winner. "Leaving the Cubs changed my life in every way," he gloats.

 

He is being naive. "You can't just decide one day you're not going to be a Cub anymore," says Cubs veteran broadcaster, Jack Brickhouse. "Cubness is a way of life -- something that's handed down from player to player, from veteran to rookie, from one baseball generation to the next."

 

LaCock, who now plays in Japan, is still a loser. But his Cubness lies in remission now, to be disturbed only by his return to the Cubs -- or, under special circumstances, by his appearance in a World Series.

 

Forty ex-Cubs are still playing for other major league teams. But only the Yankees, who have acquired five of these forty, the Montreal Expos, Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Royal, who have four each, and the Detroit Tigers, who have signed three ex-Cubs, have been foolish enough to tempt the Ex-Cub Factor.

 

There have been any number of teams victimized by the Ex-Cub Factor. The 1958 Milwaukee Braves (Andy Pafko, Bob Rush, Casey Wise) and the 1966 Los Angeles Dodgers (Jim Brewer, Wes Covington, Lou Johnson) leap quickly to mind. But, surely, the archetypal victims had to be the 1978 Los Angeles Dodgers.

 

The Dodgers entered that season carryng three ex-Cubs -- outfielder Rick Monday and pitchers Burt Hooton and Mike Garman. They had lost the 1977 World Series with the same three players. About one month into the season, Garman threw a pitch that so galled Dodger general manager Al Campanis (Dave Kingman clubbed it for a game-winning home run) that Garman was banished to Montreal the following day. The Dodgers, now down to two ex-Cubs, began to pull away from the pack.

 

But Campanis couldn't leave well enough alone. Four weeks later, he traded for ex-Cub center fielder Bill North, a mediocre outfielder hitting just .212. The team suffered an immediate tailspin and barely beat Cincinnati to the pennant.

 

Meanwhile, the defending championship New York Yankees were languishing in thrid place, fourteen games behind the Red Sox in the American League East. They were mired in turmoil. At about the time the Dodgers were acquiring North, Yankee owner George Steinbrenner was preparing to fire the combative Billy Martin. He selected calm, quiet Bob Lemon to restore peace to his team.

 

The Yankees rallied to win a dramatic pennant race, catching the Red Sox in the final week of the season and beating them in a playoff. Lemon received much of the credit for that victory, but he had nothing to do with it. The pennant belonged to Steinbrenner. He won in in mid-season, when he traded away pitcher Ken Holtzman, the team's only ex-Cub. The Yankees went the rest of the season Cub-free. How could they lose?

 

the Dodgers went on to drop the World Series to New York, four games to two. When it was suggested to Campanis, reutedly an astute baseball man, that his team had lost due to the Ex-Cub Factor, the general manager harrumphed, "We are interested in good ballplayers, not the teams they played for. You'retelling me superstitions, astrology. We don't consider things like that. We felt we had a good ballclub, but things just didn't work out for us."

 

The most recent victims of The Ex-Cub Factor were last year's American League champion Kansas City Royals. The Royals had by late August built an insurmountable divisional lead, and their roster, which included just two ex-Cubs (LaCock and Larry Gura), seemed pat. But something compelled them to purchase ex-Cub outfielder Jose Cardenal from the New York Mets.

 

Why they bothered with the World Series, we'll never know. Cardenal, who opposed the deal, was aware of the effect he would have on the Royals.

 

"I was selfish," he belatedly admitted at Wrigley Field four weeks ago. "I wanted to stay in New York. I didn't want to go to Kansas City. So I didn't tell them about my secret weapon. I said to myself, 'If I have to leave New York, I want them to go down with me, too.'"

 

There has been just one exception to The Ex-Cub Factor since 1945: the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates, who beat the Yankees in the World Series despite the handicap of three ex-Cubs, Smokey Burgess, Gene Baker, Don Hoak.

 

It seems an inexplicable occurrence, but Brosnan, a pitcher for the doomed 1961 Reds (who had ex-Cubs Brosnan, Bill Henry and Dick Gernert) has offered the most plausible explanation:

 

"Don Hoak played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, a very good team, before he was traded to the Cubs, a very bad one," remembers Brosnan from his home in suburban Chicago. "It was hard for Hoak to relate. As far as he was concerned, he went right from Brooklyn to Pittsburgh without ever stopping in Chicago.

 

"He refused to accept that he was a Cub. He had nothing but obscene words for the Cubs and their organization; he even hated (former club owner) P.K. Wrigley.

 

"Hoak," he concludes, "is quite possibly the only man who ever conquered his Cubness."

 

For that alone, he deserves election to the Hall of Fame.

 

Keep in mind, all this occured before ex-Cub Bill Buckner let a certain ground ball roll between his legs in 1986.

[SSH2005]

Thread hijack here but...

 

The Cubs stink because they foolishly depend on pitchers made of glass like Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, and Wade Miller. But it's not like they don't have any good players on their team just because they stink in the standings almost every year. I would take Derrek Lee and Carlos Zambrano off their hands in a second, even though I'm not a big fan of Zambrano's crazy antics.

Edited March 24, 2006 by SSH2005

[AddisonStSox]

This, too, is probably not the right place for this, but, today was the straw that broke the camel's back.

 

If any of you heard Bruce on ESPN today, his Cubby Blue was nearly blinding.

 

They need to preface each and every report of his with "Chicago Cubs Apologist."

 

His exchange with Silverman--noted Cubs fan--regarding the Buster Olney thing was absolutely sickening.

[southsider2k5]

Did he mention the 3 million tickets sold>?

[YASNY]

More...

 

October 24, 2002

Chicago mope

By Ron Berler

ESPN The Magazine

 

In the Giants' clubhouse last week, following the playoff-game victory over the Cardinals that vaulted them into the World Series, team members witnessed one of the most disturbing sights in recent baseball memory.

 

Shawon Dunston, the team's antediluvian outfielder/shortstop grabbed assistant general manager Ned Colletti by the arms and the two began jumping up and down, as if on a trampoline. "We're Cubs! We're in the World Series!" they shrieked at each other, deliriously.

 

It is never pretty, watching others celebrate impending defeat. Earlier in their baseball careers, both Dunston and Colletti toiled for the Cubs. The Ex-Cub Factor decrees that any team burdened by three or more ex-Chicago Cubs is doomed to World Series failure. Colletti, a non-player, doesn't count. But Dunston certainly does -- as do his fellow ex-Cubbies Benito Santiago and Tim Worrell. The Angels, on the other hand, are absolutely Cub-free. The Series may be tied 2-2 today, but Anaheim can't lose.

 

He he. This is fun.

Edited March 24, 2006 by YASNY

[SoxFan1]

Pete LaCock???

[Guest JimH]

This, too, is probably not the right place for this, but, today was the straw that broke the camel's back.

 

If any of you heard Bruce on ESPN today, his Cubby Blue was nearly blinding. 

 

They need to preface each and every report of his with "Chicago Cubs Apologist."

 

His exchange with Silverman--noted Cubs fan--regarding the Buster Olney thing was absolutely sickening.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Didn't hear it, what happened? Silverman and Levine do not like each other one bit, and neither one of them hides it.

[YASNY]

Pete LaCock???

 

Son of Peter Marshall, longtime time host of Hollywood Squares.

[AddisonStSox]

Didn't hear it, what happened?  Silverman and Levine do not like each other one bit, and neither one of them hides it.

 

Olney hinted--I believe on his blog--that the Chicago Cubs organization has handeled the injury reports of both Mark Prior and Kerry Wood in less-than-admirable fashions.

 

He wanted to know why the media has been unable to watch Prior pitch--in other words, his work-outs have been closed-door--he wanted to know how long they've really know about these injuries, and he wanted to know why this information has been labeled "classified" by the Tribune Co.

 

Levine blasted Olney, saying he needs to get his butt to Arizona before he starts writing "lies" and he is a national guy that is not reporting on his own findings, rather the findings and mis-truths of others.

 

Silverman--who was quite resonable given their on-going fued--said, "hey, listen, you have to admit the way the Cubs went about this is pretty 'shady', right?" Levine would have none of it. He said Olney had no idea what he was talking about, the Chicago Cubs have always handeled these situations the right way and was down-right appalled that someone would write such things without having the proper documentation and hands-on research to back it up.

 

Silverman, who is a big Cubs fan, mind you, admitted--much like everyone on ST believes--that the Cubs have been very unprofessional with these injury reports and basically harkened back to that time-honored belief that the Cubs organization out-right lies to the public regarding injury matters.

 

You could have sworn Levine was on the Tribune payroll.

[AddisonStSox]

Found it.

 

Per Olney's blog, available to the public:

 

Handling of Prior a mess

posted: Thursday, March 16, 2006  |  Feedback

 

Somewhere along the way, the Cubs confused themselves for the NSA and decided that the health reports on Mark Prior and Kerry Wood were worthy of top-secret status. So now the questions are being asked: What did the Cubs know about Prior's shoulder problem, and when did they know it?

 

It is amusing that the Cubs kept Prior's throwing sessions out of sight and now say there was never any previous indication of a problem. I have no idea whose idea the clandestine sessions were, but the cloak-and-dagger stuff is ridiculous in a sport like baseball. If this was the idea of anybody in the organization, it was silly -- there's no point in hiding something that is destined to become apparent at the start of the season.

 

If this was Prior's idea, on the other hand, the team should just tell him to get a grip and prepare like every other major league pitcher. If the media's interest in Prior seems like a distraction, to either the team officials or to the pitcher, here's a reality check: The Cubs and the pitcher are only feeding the curiosity by obfuscating and ducking, and if they just had him do his work out in the open and address the questions for about 10 minutes every day, they wouldn't have to spend 24 hours worrying about dealing with the issue.

 

And maybe it's time everybody involved in this stopped taking themselves so seriously: In 10 or 15 years, nobody is going to care how Prior's arm feels, and the interest now really isn't a bad thing. I don't know Prior personally, and folks who do say good things about him, but I recall that in his first year in the major leagues -- his first year -- Prior declined to do interviews the day before his starts. The only pitcher I've covered who did that was Roger Clemens, and he didn't start that until after he had won a few Cy Young awards.

 

Prior has a rigid routine and he is set in his ways, but maybe it's time for him to bend a little bit.

[Jordan4life_2007]

Kenny has come a long way as GM the last few years. He won't allow himself to be bent over in a deal for Juan Cruz.

[fathom]

Why get Juan Cruz when we have Tim Redding, Dustin Hermanson, and Matt Thornton? "WHERE WOULD HE PITCH"?

[Balta1701]

Why get Juan Cruz when we have Tim Redding, Dustin Hermanson, and Matt Thornton?    "WHERE WOULD HE PITCH"?

Based on his numbers last year, that's actually a very fair question.

[AddisonStSox]

About three minutes of the interview will be replayed on today's Mac, Jurko, and Harry broadcast.

 

If you're interested, it should be on soon.

[southsider2k5]

About three minutes of the interview will be replayed on today's Mac, Jurko, and Harry broadcast.

 

If you're interested, it should be on soon.

That ought to be worth listening to. MacNeil is a nut for professionalism in broadcasting and LOVES to tear apart Levine. I'd appreciate hilights if anyone is listening.