St. Louis Cardinals: 30 worst players in team history

#15 Hector Cruz 3B/OF

Hector Cruz played with the Cardinals from 1973-1978 and finished his career with an fWAR of -2.5, making him by far the worst player to ever don the Cardinals’ uniform in terms of fWAR. However, we have Cruz rated at #13, due to his limited time as a Cardinal and relatively even values. So, what made him so bad, you ask?

While Cruz was very versatile throughout his career, playing at third base, left field, center field, and right field. He wasn’t good defensively at any of those positions, posting negative defensive values in each of his four and a half seasons with club.

Offensively, Cruz wasn’t anything to write home about either, as he posted a slash of .224/.294/.338 with a career wRC+ of 75 during his time as a Cardinal. The reason why Cruz isn’t our worst player, is because of his offensive and defensive values being relatively “not bad” in relation to other players on this list. His offensive value over his time was just -29 runs above average while his defensive value was -29 as well.

In terms of offensive value, there are 51 players with 500 plate appearances or more with a lower value and on defense there 29 players with worse values than Cruz. So, one could even make the argument that Cruz doesn’t belong on this list, but with his -2.5 fWAR being the worst in team history, he cannot be left off.

On the base paths, Cruz was even at 0.0 runs above average. This means that Cruz was not a good baserunner, but he wasn’t a bad one either.

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