The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: Cubs Trades

So, lets start off rough, and work our way towards good. The Ugly, most of you will probably know what I am going to talk about. The thing that hurt most about it? We sent him to our most hated rivals. That's right, the winner of the ugly is: Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio.

At the time the trade actually favored the Cubs with Broglio having 70 wins in his first five seasons with the Cardinals along with 700+ strikeouts, whereas Brock, 24 sported a .260 average and "didn't know how to run the bases." Broglio suffered a sore arm with the Cubs and went 7-19 in two plus seasons with the Cubs. We all know what happened with Brock, leading the Cardinals to a World Series and leading the league in steals eight times, on his way to a Hall Of Fame career.

Now for a bad, and in all fairness the Cubs had no intention of holding on to him at all, but it still hurt to know we could have had Josh Hamilton, who was considered to be the "best name in the rule five in years."

The Cubs drafted him after he was left off of the then Tampa Bay Devil Rays roster. Hamilton was traded to the Red's right after being drafted for cash. It will go down as a bad deal just because we had him but none of it will ever be held against Jim Hendry because there was no intention of keeping the now Texas superstar.

One last bad and then we will move on to the good, promise. The Sergio Mitre, Ricky Nolasco and Renyel Pinto for Juan Pierre deal was made to make the Cubs a faster team and to get a "legitimate leadoff hitter." What did Pierre do for the ONE season the Cubs had him? Well, he did have a .330 OBP... but got caught stealing 20 times while attempting 78 times, that's an 82% stolen base rate, not to good for someone who calls himself a base stealer.

Pierre did have a decent season with the Cubs, collecting 204 hits and batting .292 for the season. The Cubs didn't get to the playoffs and did not resign him in the offseason, which is where my main problem lies in this deal. We traded three players (one extrodinary player in Nolasco) for a one year rental, with no intentions of resigning him in the offseason. Nolasco has finally come into his own having a great season last year where he had an ERA+ of 121 and a WHIP of 1.102.

Now here comes the good, it has been a long wait so no more delays. Hee-Seop Choi for Derrek Lee, this was looked at as a salary dump by the Marlins, which is what they usually do after winning a World series but Choi at the time was a promising player with some upside. The Marlins liked the young man and traded straight up with the Cubs. Choi is out of the MLB and D-Lee has been a solid aquisition for one corner of the Cubs infield where he has had a .301 BA, .379 OBP a .529 SLG and a very impressive .908 OPS.

The next got us very far in 2003 and has given the Cubs their most solid third baseman since Santo graced us with his presence at the hot corner. The infamous deal of Jose Hernandez, Matt Bruback and Bobby Hill for Aramis Ramirez and Kenny Lofton gave us that third baseman.

The 2003 playoff run can really be attributed to these two players, there was really no reason for the Pirates to trade Aramis, other than the fact that they were again out of the playoff race, but it seems that they may have done it to free up some money. Rent-a-Kenny was a great addition as well because he filled the void that Patterson left after tearing his ACL early in the season. The Cubs fell short that year in the NLCS but Ramirez has been with the club since and with improved defense.

The final deal that is more great than good, brought us Larry Bowa and the now Hall Of Fame second baseman, Ryne Sandberg. Traded for Ivan DeJesus before the 1982 season because Bowa caused the Phillies' front office havoc which they no longer wanted to put up with, Dallas Green, the Cubs GM at the time, wanted a younger prospect to come along with Bowa (who was on the back end of his career).

The deal worked out for the Cubs as they got one of the best second basemen of his era and eventually led the Cubs to a heck of a run in 1984. 

These are only some of the trades the Cubs made over the years, but these are some of the most important in franchise history. There were more good, more bad, and yes even more ugly, but very few come close to these deals.