The Cubs Chronicle

This is old news in blog time, but yesterday the Cubs traded Juan Cruz and Steve Smyth to the Atlanta Braves for lefthanded pitcher Andy Pratt and infielder Richard Lewis. (Commenter Eric S first alerted me to this in a comment to the previous post.) Like I was with Hee Seop Choi, I’m sad to see Cruz go. I still think he could be really good. I even predicted a month ago that “Cruz will finish with better starting pitcher rate numbers than Greg Maddux this season” (on the assumption that he’d get some starts due to injuries). That’s probably an unrealistic prediction, but how ironic would it be if Cruz ended up fulfilling that prediction, only in a Braves uniform, the team the Cubs took Maddux away from?

Braves blogger No Pepper is happy with the trade. (Link via The Cub Reporter.)

Still, the Cubs appear to have gotten a good lefty pitcher in return in Pratt. As The Big Red C comments, the trade essentially “boils down to an old-fashioned challenge trade of pitching prospects.” Jim Hendry indicates Pratt has a good chance to make the team with Mike Remlinger sidelined: “We felt that Andy was a guy who could really help us, not only now but in the future. He’s got quality stuff. He could pitch out of the pen. He’s got a good chance to come to our ballclub and stick right away and start the season out of the pen.”

Meanwhile, the Sun-Times‘ Mike Kiley thinks Richard Lewis was a big part of the deal: “Don’t think Lewis is just a minor-league throw-in. The Cubs view him as a young Grudzielanek.” But as MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo writes in an analysis of the trade, “Some scouts think he has Major League utilityman value in the future.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Lewis’s stats bear that out. After a solid last season in college with Georgia Tech, Lewis was a first-round draft pick. But he hasn’t done much with the bat in the minors, and had just a 646 OPS in Double-A last year.

As for losing Steve Smyth, Weeghman Park has the best line: “[I]sn’t it ironic that ‘Steve Smyth’ translated into Canadian is ‘Micah Bowie’? Consider the favor returned, Mr. Schuerholz.”

In other news, Jose Macias is out for about a month with torn meniscus in his left knee. Mike Kiley “reports” on who has the best shot to replace Macias on the big league roster: “Speculation is that one of two outfield prospects, Nic Jackson or Dave Kelton, is likely to replace Macias. Jackson might have the edge, giving manager Dusty Baker late-inning speed on the bases.” But as Cubs Now! understates, “Kiley has a tendency to use his own speculation as his reporting so take it for what it’s worth.” I think Jackson isn’t ready, and needs to play everyday in Iowa. But the Daily Herald’s Bruce Miles wrote in Friday’s paper that the “organization may view it more critical that Kelton and [Jason] Dubois get as many at-bats as possible in Iowa” (emphasis added). It certainly gives Cubs fans something to talk about other than Mark Prior’s achilles.

UPDATE (12:15pm): Baseball Musings comments on the Cruz trade: “[M]y first thought was, ‘The Cubs are relatively rich in pitching. Why didn’t a team like Texas try to make this deal?’ My second thought was, ‘Atlanta could turn Juan into a star.’”

And Baseball Prospectus’s Chris Kahrl writes: “[T]his is not a good deal for the Cubs. Pratt might turn into a useful rotation starter, but it isn’t a sure thing . . . . Worse still, they dealt Cruz when his value was lowest, and at a point where the guy on the other end of the phone had to know Cruz had fallen out of favor.”