Wednesday, the Cubs announced that Jed Hoyer and Jason McLeod will join Epstein in the front office. Both Hoyer and McLeod come front he Padres organization, in what appear to be lateral moves. Jed Hoyer was the General Manager in San Diego, the same title he'll hold with the Cubs. McLeod was an assistant to the GM in San Diego, but will be head of scouting and player development with Chicago. Both Hoyer and McLeod were with Epstein in Boston, and will try to work magic with a lack-luster Cubs organization. The Cubs will send a player to be named later back to the Padres as compensation.
The outlook for the Cubs appears to be a lot brighter with their new front office. With the help of Hoyer and McLeod, Epstein took the Red Sox from a mediocre team with a well storied history of playoff heartbreaks, to a perennial playoff contender and two world championships. Moving from the American League East to the National League central, I expect that the new Cubs front office will have no trouble turning the ship around. The only question is; how long will it take.
The Cubs are a mess right now. They have a thin major league roster, disgruntled players, and bad contracts all around. The team is older, and has a lot of players on the downslope of their careers. The rotation has a few young pieces, but they underperformed and were plagued with injures this past year. Much of their young talent went over to Tampa in exchange for Matt Garza. Starlin Castro may be their only bright spot on the major league roster, but he is still young, and has a lot of growing up to do.
The minor league talent for the Cubs is so-so. They're not great, but they're not the Astros either. They're maybe a little below average, right around 16-20 depending on how you feel about a few players. I think if Theo gets total control of the organization, without the Ricketts family having any input, he'll take it slow, and try to build up a better farm system, and let that build up the major league roster. There's nothing that the Theo and company can do about the Alfonso Soriano deal, short of making a miracle trade, a-la Vernon Wells to the Angels.
There's been a lot made about the Cubs going after one of the two big first basemen on the free agent market. Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder are both terrific players, but I'm not sure either are right for the Cubs. They'd be taking either from a division rival, so in a sense, they'd be good deals. They negatives outweigh the positives though. If I were running a National League team, I'd be very hesitant to sign Prince Fielder to a long term deal. I think he's about three years away from being a full-time designated hitter. His defense is already terrible, and that body type doesn't fair well historically as it moves into it's mid-thirties. Prince is a left handed hitter though, and one thing that the Cubs could use is a little balance in their lineup.
Albert on the other hand is a right handed hitter. It'd be hard to tell a team that signing the best player in baseball is a bad move, but i don't think that it'd make sense for the Cubs. I don't see a scenario where the Cubs are a legitimate contender until 2014. Now, it they sign Pujols of Fielder, it would help attract attention and being fans to the park, and possibly help them stay near .500. By 2014 though, Pujols will be 34, and although he hasn't had a lot of injuries in his career, neither did Alex Rodriguez, and look where he's at now. The Yankees have the luxury of playing in the American League with a DH, but they Cubs will have to find a spot in field to keep these guys.
Back in the "Steroid Era," we say players playing at a high level into their late thirties and early forties, but since the MLB got tough of steroid use, we have seen more players break down in their mid thirties. I don't think that teams are properly gaging the risk of a players decline due to age and injuries when they sign them to long term deals. The Phillies certainly didn't when they signed Ryan Howard to a $125m/5 year deal last offseason. That deal hasn't even started and it already looks like they're going to regret it. I think Theo would rather take that money, and spend it in the draft and player development, let the mistakes of the old regime play out their contracts and start fresh. In this strategy, the only snag he might run into is the Alfonso Soriano deal. If the Cubs are serious to contend in 2014, Soriano is still slated to be on the roster, and be making $18 million. I don't see a scenario where Soriano is still even a replacement level player in 2014. His composite on base percentage over the past three years is .305. Theo and his crew understand enough about baseball to know that you can't deal with a player in left field who can't play defense and only gets on base 30% of the time.
Another decision Theo will have to make is about Mike Quade. I don' think Quade is as bad as the public's perception would have you think. He got a lot of heat during the season for the teams performance, but they weren't that good to begin with, and suffered a lot of injuries. I think that Theo will have a few meetings with Quade, to get a feel for him. Then they'll talk strategy and see if they agree on the new direction of the club, and how they want to play. If they see eye-to-eye on enough stuff, I could see him staying with the team. If not, the Cubs fans have been clamoring for Ryan Sandberg to have the job for a few years now, and he would likely get a look. The truth about it is, the manager for Theo's teams in Boston didn't have to do that much during the game. Managing the starting pitcher/bullpen was Terry Francona's biggest responsibility. As far as the offense goes, he just let them play. We've seen in this World Series when Tony La Russa inserts himself into the game with sacrifices and hit and runs, it's really hinders the offense. Of course, in the National League, whoever Theo chooses to captain his club, they will have to slightly more than Tito, because of the pitcher's spot in the batting order.
The Cubs have definitely made a play to try and get themselves on the upswing again, but there's still a lot of work to be done. I think what Theo and company bring is a level of professionalism that's been missing from the organization. I don't think this team will continue it's ways of offering bad contracts, or trading away minor league prospects to get major league assets in a rebuilding year. Theo isn't perfect though. Towards the end of his tenure with the Red Sox he did start to turn them into the Evil Empire Part Two. Their payroll did start to balloon with the signings of John Lackey, Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, and Diasuke Matsuzaka. The outlook on the Red Sox right now isn't great moving forward. They are turning into an older team, and if they bring David Ortiz back, they could find themselves in a spot where they have a logjam at DH in the coming years.
Other Boston Related Things:
John Lackey is set to have Tommy John surgery on a right elbow that was apparently hurting throughout the season. If this is the case, it would certainly explain why Lackey wasn't his best down the stretch. It does however raise a question to me. If the Red Sox knew about this before the trade deadline, why didn't they make a move to add more pitching. They were already down Clay Buchholz and Diasuke at that point. They should have made a move to acquire a Wandy Rodriguez, Doug Fister, Ubaldo Jimenez, or Jason Vargas. I don't see it being a big deal having Lackey wait until the end of the season to have the surgery however. If he could pitch through it, I think it was the right decision. They're going to replace the tendon anyway, so there's no harm in further injuring it. If he had the surgery either in June or today, he would still miss the whole 2012 season in all likelihood.
I think that this whole Rob Gronkowski thing is getting a little over blown too. A few pictures of him with a porn star popped up on the internet a few days ago, and everyone is making a big deal about it. Neither of them were naked or doing drugs or anything. If the girl's job wasn't taboo in America, it wouldn't be that big a deal. When i hear people say that hanging out with her was wrong, I think, "so what you're saying is that because of her job, she's less of a person. Good to know." And I'm sick of people always saying that everything offends them. Then stop paying attention. This is America, I can say whatever I want, take pictures with whoever I want, and it if offends you, then go away, because I probably wouldn't want to be around you anyway.
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