At Least He Made it.
- Jeremiah Edwards
- Jun 22, 2017
- 3 min read
Name: Fausto Cruz
Card Company: Fleer
Year: 1994
Team: Oakland Athletics
Bats/Throws: R
Ht: 5'11
Okay here we go again, another player that had a rather uninspiring run in professional baseball. Hey but at least this guy made it to pro baseball, the same can’t be said for other cards that I’ve reviewed. But then again that’s about the biggest positive I can say about him. But, as always that won’t stop me from diving into the shallow pool that is his career to find the interesting facts and stats.
Fausto Cruz is from the Monte Cristi Province of the Dominican Republic, where their hotels according to google possess an average 3-star rating. The Dominican Republic is known as a goldmine when it comes to baseball talent, producing the likes of David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal. The Dominican Republic is not a wealthy country by any means, but the country is rich with baseball history and tradition. Fausto Cruz however was not part of this legacy and tradition of great players to come out of the Dominican Republic.
Fausto Cruz was originally signed by the Oakland Athletics as an undrafted free agent in 1990. And his minor league career started out well enough posting two seasons in the minors where he hit better than .300. The A’s were impressed by this so in the 1994 season Oakland called up Fausto Cruz from triple-A to the A’s for his major league debut. However, his first season didn’t go as planned as he only managed to collect 3 hits in 38 plate appearances, good enough for a .107 batting average. Maybe he could’ve got more playing time had the MLB strike not happened, but either way Cruz
was already off to a bad start.
The following season the A’s reassigned him down to their triple-A affiliate in Edmonton, Alberta Canada to start the year. Cruz again would impress batting .281 with 11 HR and 67 RBI’s in 114 games. Once again, he impressed the A’s enough to make himself a late September call-up. Though while not great he did manage to improve his batting average over 100 points improving it to .217. Though he only played in 8 games that year he managed to collect his first career RBI.
After the 1995 season Fausto Cruz along with Ramon Fermin were traded to the Detroit Tigers in for Phil Plantier. Nobody would really win this trade as Plantier would flame out in Oakland and Fermin never made it out of the minors. As for Cruz, again he would post some decent numbers in the minor leagues before being called up and being completely outmatched at the big-league level. The Anaheim Angels would sign him to a minor league contract, and for the next two years he played for the Vancouver Canadians never making it back to the MLB.
He would then spend 6 years bouncing around the Mexican Baseball league, posting an impressive career average of .310 while playing in Mexico. While in Mexico he managed to slug a confirmed 54 homeruns and drive in 255 confirmed RBI’s. While in Mexico he played for teams like the Torreon Algodoneros, Yucatan Leones, Oaxaca Guerreros and the Piratas de Campeche.
Even though he may never had ascended to the level like other players from the Dominican Republic, he still can say he made it to the MLB. Fausto Cruz in the end managed to carve out a 14-year baseball career that stretched from Canada to the United States to Mexico.
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