1982 Brewers: The Fingers-Simmons-Vuckovich Deal

This article appears in SABR’s “Harvey’s Wallbangers: The 1982 Milwaukee Brewers” (2020), edited by Gregory H. Wolf.

On December 12, 1980, the Brewers and the St. Louis Cardinals made a seven-player trade. Three central figures on the 1982 AL pennant-winners came to Milwaukee: closer Rollie Fingers, starting catcher Ted Simmons, and frontline starter Pete Vuckovich. In return, St. Louis received two starters, Dave LaPoint and Lary Sorensen; outfielder Sixto Lezcano; and another outfielder, touted prospect David Green. Two years later, Dave Anderson of the New York Times wrote, “Some trades hurt both teams, but the best trades help both teams. That trade between the Brewers and the Cardinals not only helped both teams, but it also helped both teams get to this 79th World Series.”1

Let’s take a look back at how the complex blockbuster deal developed – and the value that each team got from it. The bottom line:

The Brewers benefited more directly in the short term … The trade is viewed by many as the best the franchise has ever made. It brought back-to-back Cy Young Award winners, helped get Milwaukee into the playoffs for the first time ever in 1981, and nearly paid off with a World Series championship the next year. However, injuries curtailed the careers of Fingers and Vuckovich, and Simmons was in decline after 1982. Unlike the Cardinals, Milwaukee got almost no value from subsequent transactions.

… but the Cardinals won big through secondary deals and beyond: The players obtained from Milwaukee didn’t make the same kind of direct impact – but subsequently, they were involved in other very important trades. Lezcano was part of the deal that brought the brilliant shortstop Ozzie Smith. Sorensen was part of a three-way trade that provided another key member of the ’82 champs, Lonnie Smith. Even though Green didn’t fulfill his vast potential, he and LaPoint helped net Jack Clark, the big bopper on the pennant winners of 1985 and 1987. What’s more, when Clark left as a free agent, the Cardinals got a draft pick who turned out to be a star: Brian Jordan. Thus, they were still benefiting from this deal as late as 1998. It might have gone on even longer had Chance Caple, the pick received when Jordan too became a free agent, reached the majors.

How the deal developed

According to Daniel Okrent in Nine Innings, the Brewers and Cardinals started to feel each other out in October with a simple even-up proposal: Vuckovich for Sorensen. Cardinals manager/general manager Whitey Herzog wasn’t willing to give Vuckovich a long-term contract. Brewers GM Harry Dalton turned down the offer then and again in November, but he got scout Dee Fondy to check out Vuckovich – his ability, the condition of his arm, his alleged love of nightlife. The reports all came back positive. Ray Scarborough, then a special-assignment scout for the Brewers, seconded Fondy.2

Milwaukee’s primary goal that offseason was to obtain a high-quality relief pitcher. They wanted either Fingers, then with the San Diego Padres, or Bruce Sutter, then a Chicago Cub. But on December 8, 1980, the Cardinals obtained Fingers in an 11-player trade with San Diego. The very next day, St. Louis got Sutter too.

The Brewers had also been looking into another Cubs reliever, Dick Tidrow, who was capable but not in the same echelon. “As soon as Whitey got Sutter, we figured he wouldn’t want to keep Fingers, too,” Harry Dalton said. “That’s when we started talking about Fingers, and we also knew that Vuckovich and Simmons might be available.”3

Indeed, the St. Louis makeover started on December 7 with the signing of free-agent catcher Darrell Porter from the Kansas City Royals. The idea was to move Simmons (somewhat suspect defensively) to first base and put Keith Hernandez in left field. Both players expressed their doubts. “You’re taking a Gold Glove and putting him at a position other than where he might win it,” Simmons said of Hernandez, one of the best-fielding first basemen ever to play the game. After mulling it over, Simmons asked to be traded.4

It’s also notable that Milwaukee’s plans for the 1981 season included shifting Paul Molitor from the infield to center field and Gorman Thomas from center to right. “The Brewers decided to gamble on putting Lezcano up for barter,” Sports Illustrated wrote in March 1981. “Sixto became expendable,” said Buck Rodgers, then the team’s manager. “We knew we had to give up quality to get quality. We had to decide what good player to give up.”5

Surrendering Vuckovich meant that the Cardinals “needed depth on the staff,” said Herzog. “So we traded for Lary Sorensen.”6 LaPoint was still just a prospect then. He was in the mix for a spot on the St. Louis staff in 1981 but did not play with the big club until that September.

As negotiations progressed, the sticking point was Green. The gifted but troubled Nicaraguan was off the table at first. Brewers scout Ray Poitevint, who’d signed Green in 1978, argued vehemently against including him. Former Brewers PR director Tom Skibosh recalled, “It got so heated that Ray Poitevint and Ray Scarborough almost came to fisticuffs in a meeting. Poitevint was saying, ‘David Green is the future of this organization,’ and Scarborough was saying, ‘Forget the future. We have a chance to get these guys; we want to win now.’ They almost went at it. They had to separate them.”7

But as Herzog said, “We think so much of Green that we would not have made the deal if he had not been in it.”8 Poitevint – and Dalton – relented.

Green’s potential outweighed Herzog’s reservations. In 1995 he said that he’d heard from a Milwaukee scout that Green had a problem with alcohol before the trade was made.9 Players’ substance-abuse history was an undercurrent in Herzog’s decision-making. Darrell Porter had gone through rehab in the spring of 1980 and had to battle problems throughout his life (cocaine use contributed to his death in 2002). Sorensen also developed severe alcoholism, though it is not clear whether it had come to a head during his time in Milwaukee and St. Louis.

There was one final hurdle to clear, though: Simmons’s agent, Larue Harcourt, demanded payment before the catcher would waive his “10-and-five” rights (i.e., as a veteran of 10 years’ standing, the last five with the same club, Simmons could block a trade).10 Originally Harcourt wanted $1 million, his estimate of the market value then for Simmons.

Dalton had reconciled himself to the idea of a payment, but he also was still considering a smaller-scale deal with St. Louis. He also was in talks with the Philadelphia Phillies about a deal involving Lezcano, who’d been disappointing in 1980 after a career year in 1979. Herzog had a good fallback option too – the New York Yankees had offered a deal that included their best pitcher, Ron Guidry. He was willing to take it if Milwaukee couldn’t sign Simmons.11

Milwaukee didn’t want the deal to blow up; they’d heard the Yankees were also very interested in Vuckovich as well as Simmons. Also, because of New York’s offer, the smaller trade with St. Louis was no longer an option. So the Brewers’ president/owner, Bud Selig, authorized Dalton to go up to a $750,000 payment to get Simmons.12 “We decided to wrap it up and we did,” said Dalton in 1982.13

With the benefit of hindsight, how did the big trade work out?

Let’s first look at it from Milwaukee’s side.

Fingers: The mustachioed closer paid immediate dividends for the Brewers, winning the AL Cy Young Award in 1981. Alas, injury in September 1982 ended his season early; who knows how the World Series might have turned out had he been available? He missed all of 1983 and the second half of 1984. Milwaukee released him after 1985 and his big-league career was finished.

Simmons: The catcher had a down year in 1981 but rebounded strongly in ’82. The 1983 season was the last in which he played a significant amount behind the plate. Milwaukee traded him to the Atlanta Braves in March 1986 for catcher Rick Cerone and two other players who never made it to the majors (pitcher David Clay and infielder Flavio Alfaro). Cerone played just one season with the Brewers and then joined the Yankees as a free agent. The Brewers received a second-round draft pick as compensation. That player, pitcher Curt Krippner, never advanced beyond Class A.

Vuckovich: The menacing mound psychologist had two good years in Milwaukee, including a Cy Young Award in 1982. Subsequent arm problems may well have been caused by overuse down the stretch in ’82, though the ultra-competitive Vuke always wanted the ball. From 1983 on, he pitched in just 31 games; he retired after spring training 1987.

The table below quantifies Milwaukee’s benefits in terms of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) at the primary and secondary level.

Source: Baseball-reference.com.

And now let’s turn to the value the Cardinals received. This is trickier to analyze because the “trade tree” has a lot more branches.

LaPoint: During the trade talks in 1980, Harry Dalton thought that the lefty prospect might develop into a 15-game winner. George Bamberger, who’d managed the Brewers for part of that season and who was renowned for his knowledge of pitching, said, “Good luck to him. Don’t look back.”14 LaPoint played in St. Louis from 1981 through 1984 after the trade with Milwaukee. He was then part of the five-player deal in February 1985 that brought Jack Clark from the San Francisco Giants. As it developed, the most valuable player the Giants got from St. Louis was shortstop José Uribe. Uribe was not an impact player like Clark, though, which shows a limitation of the WAR analysis here.

LaPoint actually did wind up winning as many as 14 games in 1988. His major-league career lasted through 1991.

Sorensen: The righty pitched just one year in St. Louis, going 7-7 with a 3.27 ERA during the strike season of 1981. He then went to the Cleveland Indians as part of the three-way deal in November 1981 that brought Lonnie Smith to St. Louis from the Phillies. As Whitey Herzog recalled in 2016, Smith was a risk, because of a known cocaine habit (which landed him in rehab in 1983) and an apparent fight he’d had with the Phillies’ mascot, the Phanatic.15 Yet when Herzog heard that Indians GM Phil Seghi said the Tribe needed pitching more than Smith, and that the price was Sorensen and Silvio Martinez, Herzog said, “Get [Seghi] on the phone and make that deal right now.”16

Smith was the Cardinals’ starting left fielder from 1982 – when he was runner-up for National League MVP – until he was traded in May 1985. Sorensen spent two seasons with the Indians – the first subpar, the second pretty good – and then left as a free agent. His major-league career lasted through 1988 and was hampered by alcohol and cocaine use. Later in life, Sorensen’s alcohol problem became especially severe.17

Lezcano: Like Sorensen, the Puerto Rican was in St. Louis only for 1981. He didn’t do all that much. In December 1981, Ozzie Smith – “The Wizard” – came to St. Louis in the trade that featured shortstop Garry Templeton, often labeled “talented but moody.” Smith stayed with the Redbirds for 15 years and then retired; six years later, he entered the Hall of Fame. Lezcano was out of the majors after 1985.

Green: David Green is one of baseball’s big “what if?” stories. But as Harry Dalton put it, “Not every phenom phenominates.”18 Nagging injuries as well as his personal troubles kept Green from realizing his “five-tool” promise. Green spent one unimpressive season with the Giants, and after that, his only other time in the majors was 14 games for the Cardinals in late 1987.

The following table quantifies the Cardinals’ benefits from the deal in terms of WAR at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.

Source: Baseball-reference.com.

RORY COSTELLO has contributed to a variety of SABR book projects over the years. This one intrigued him because of the characters on the club. Rory lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Noriko, and son, Kai.

Notes

1 Dave Anderson, “Trade That Brewed the 6-Pack Series,” New York Times, October 12, 1982.

2 Daniel Okrent, Nine Innings (Boston: Houghton Miflin Company, 1985), 206-207.

3 Anderson, “Trade That Brewed the 6-Pack Series.”

4 Rick Hummel, “Cards Do a Quick-Change Routine,” The Sporting News, December 27, 1980: 41.

5 Ron Fimrite, “The Trade That Made Milwaukee Famous,” Sports Illustrated, March 16, 1981.

6 Joseph Durso, “It’s Experimental, but Cards Beat Mets, 5-3,” New York Times, March 15, 1981.

7 Dennis Punzel, “Brewers’ Trade Dilemma Has Familiar Ring,” Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin), July 6, 2008.

8 “Cardinals Trade Simmons, Fingers to Milwaukee.” United Press International, December 13, 1980.

9 Rick Hummel, “Herzog Laments Wasted Potential of David Green,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 5, 1995: 7F.

10 Hummel, “Cards Do a Quick-Change Routine.”

11 Okrent, Nine Innings, 210-212.

12 Okrent, Nine Innings, 212-213.

13 Anderson, “Trade That Brewed the 6-Pack Series.”

14 Okrent, Nine Innings, 206.

15 Todd Eschman, “Whitey Herzog Revisits the Year He Rebuilt the Redbirds,” Belleville (Illinois) News-Democrat, January 24, 2016.

16 Whitey Herzog and Kevin Horrigan, White Rat (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 139.

17 “The Successes, Demons, and Trials of Lary Sorensen,” Yes! Weekly, July 16, 2014.

18 Okrent, Nine Innings, 210.