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1. Moses Taylor peacocks peacock Posted: October 20, 2011 at 05:16 PM (#3969380)Also, the Cubs won't be compensating the Padres for Hoyer according to that story.
Ok, sounds good to me.
This reminds me of trading cards with my younger brother when we were children. I regularly would pony up a pile of commons as trade bait for a Ken Griffey Jr. insert. Bless that boy's heart of gold, he usually accepted the trade proposal.
How big a difference is this from what Theo is currently doing? My perception is that the GM had control over the way the organization ran, is this not the case? Are the Sox unusually structured in this regard? I'm genuinely curious because I keep hearing how Theo isn't making a lateral move but it sure looks like one to me and Hoyer looks like he's making a slight downward move.
The Cubs will be so insulted that Theo Epstein will never deal with the Red Sox after they tried to overstate the value of Theo Epstein!
Yeah, I don't understand why Hoyer would make this move.
Maybe the alternative wasn't being the Padres GM.
Like the bum who was BA's #75 prospect then hit .331/.404/.652 at AAA as a 21-year-old. Yeah, they really got screwed.
There's a good argument to be made that the Sox would have been much better off if that deal didn't go through.
Gammons says he'd barely crack Boston's top 25 prospects.
I can't see it. Even if you assume it means they bring back Beltre you still have a situation where Youk/Gonzalez was better than Beltre/Youk and Rizzo was awful in the big leagues so he wouldn't have helped and Kelly and Fuentes are still far enough away to be less than sure things.
If you assume that Youk stays healthy and produces like he did in 2009 you've still got a pretty close WAR (Beltre/Youk2009 - 11.6, Gonzalez/Youk - 11.2) and I think that's an awfully big assumption to make.
The only edge is the Sox get into play on Fielder/Pujols this off-season but that only is a positive if you get one of those guys which I think is far from a sure thing.
Well, Theo has a boss in Boston - Lucchino - right? Not sure the exact details of the relationship, but Larry does have some baseball say, right? In Chicago, Theo is the unquestioned top baseball guy and reports directly to the owner. He probably has more say over more areas than in Boston. Depending on the dynamics of the office in SD, this might be simply a lateral move for Hoyer, but it's a bigger sandbox (the other threads speculate about Byrnes being under him but so tight with the owner Hoyer may actually have more leeway in Chicago than in SD).
I'm sure there's other benefits to being a President and not the GM, in terms of the lower level day to day stuff that GMs have to deal with, that would also count as a promotion.
Also:
Is it they didn't win anything in 2011 anyway and maybe could have gotten Gonzalez (or Pujols) anyway this offseason?
It seems like it but it's not at all clear to me how that works. Just watching the Sox during Theo's reign they have always had a general purpose to what they have done and I've always assumed that to be Theo's influence. It could be Lucchino driving the bus though as he has been with the club throughout Theo's time.
Yeah, I made that comment in another thread. The Cubs are recreating the Andy MacPhail model. To be fair, I don't think there's anything wrong with the "Andy MacPhail model" per se; I think most of the problems with the Cubs under Andy MacPhail were because of MacPhail and his various GMs more than the model itself.
The Cubs have hired a two-time World Series-winning GM to be their top baseball guy, who then turns around and hires an underling with the official job title of "GM". How does this NOT sound like MacPhail?
EDIT: " Do you think he's coming here for that kind of money, and through this tedious compensation process so he can just sign off on whatever Hoyer wants?"
If Andy MacPhail just signed off on whatever Ed Lynch (was that his first GM?) did, that seems more an issue with how MacPhail did his job than how the model was set up.
Chase ________ has the owner's ear. If he says some big name hack will keep the seats full at Wrigley, and sell a bunch of jerseys, and Theo doesn't want the guy, is Theo going to win those battles?
I can see a few different reasons. One is the simple challenge of the job. Second is that he really enjoys working with Theo. It could be that he doesn't care about the title, he knows that with Theo they'll operate more as partners and less in a strict hierarchy. It could be that he prefers not being the chief.
A good friend of mine falls into the latter category. He loves being second in command to a solid chief who listens to and respects him enough to delegate lots of responsibility and authority to him. He doesn't like the headaches that go along with being the number one guy. He's done it, and would rather not again.
Ok, sounds good to me.
Stinks to high heaven, just like I said at the time.
I think Depo might fall in that category.
Yes. And the guy's name is Crane Kenney, and the Chicago media's hatred of him is the most hilariously weird thing I've ever seen.
Re: MacPhail, I took it as a derisive comparison. Obviously, the Cubs under Epstein are going to be a different beast than the Cubs under MacPhail. My perception was that MacPhail wasn't too hands on with the baseball side of things. He didn't have a Kenney around to handle the tedious business stuff like Theo will.
I don't understand what makes you so confident that their hatred of him isn't deserved or isn't at least rooted in something.
This is a good point. My first reaction to the idea that they were going to "promote" Epstein and hire a GM under him was that it reminded me of MacPhail - who I think was a victim of the "Peter principle" where the Cubs promoted him above his level of expertise. But it's not the model that was problem, it was MacPhail. Epstein seems like a much sharper baseball guy than MacPhail, and despite the superficial "two-time World Series winning GM" thing, the Red Sox are a much better organization today than the Twins were when MacPhail left (both of the Twins' WS winners was kind of a fluke). Actually, the model makes a lot of sense, if Epstein's responsibilities end on the baseball side of things.
I'm not a Cubs fan, but Kenney strikes me as a Randy Levine of the Midwest. Far more polite than the Yankees' version, but unlikable just the same.
So far I've got
-He wears a personalized Cubs jersey around the office some times
-He brought in the priest to bless the dugout before the '08 playoffs
Anything else?
Sorta. They missed the playoffs in 2011, which they could have done without Gonzalez. If they had not done the deal, and instead used a stopgap 1B (or Beltre), they could still pursue Gonzalez in 2012, while retaining their top prospects--it's not like he would have cost much more than the 7/154 they're shelling out now. They also could have first attempted to balance out their heavily lefty lineup by going after Pujols.
That by itself has got to be the equivalent of offering to trade Lackey for a one-legged girl, no matter how much of a genius Epstein may be. I can only wonder what Lackey's thinking of his standing with the Red Sox right now.
Of course he does have about 46 million reasons to be consoled in his dissing....
Not sure if it's true or not, but wasn't he the reason the Soriano deal was so big and long? Most of the other non-specific stories all reference some sort of meddling in the baseball affairs.
Now, I'm not going to blindly take the Chicago media's side on anything, but doesn't it strike you as odd that almost *everyone* in the media has a similar negative impression of him?
I would hope that if nothing else Lackey would show up in Spring Training next year truly in the best shape of his life. That might not change things, his arm might be shot, but I hope there is a part of him that is really working his ass off this off-season.
The Cubs won 90 games - which is how many this year's Red Sox won - exactly once under MacPhail and they required 163 games to do so that year (1998).
Would you care to give it? Other then the Red Sox being able to afford more fried chicken and beer, I can't think of any.
And again what does that have to with the non-baseball side of things?
By focusing his attention on the business side (which was doing fine before MacPhail got there - Cubs' attendance ranged from 2nd to 5th in the NL from 1984 - 92 and then ranged from 5th to 6th from 1995 - 99), and choosing to delegate his baseball authority to Ed Lynch, the Cubs didn't see the kind of on-field improvement that they were hoping for and that maybe they could have gotten if they had just made MacPhail the GM and let others worry about the business side. Or maybe MacPhail was never that good at the baseball side either, I don't know (and, to clarify, MacPhail wasn't BAD with the Cubs, they had their moments under him, just not enough of them).
Except that Gonzalez might well have been dealt elsewhere and signed a contract extension there.
On Kenney, my understanding was the Soriano contract was a directive of the Tribune, Kenney was just their mouthpiece. It's possible he was meddling in other affairs, but the fact that nobody in the media gives any examples makes me wonder.
I hesitate to even take consensus opinions from sports media as fact. Kenney could just be an ####### that treats the media like ####.
Yes, and the big deal being made over his personalized Cubs shirt is also widely cited. I'd say that as symbolic gestures go, that's one that the reporters think speaks volumes about things that are maybe not getting reported.
This reminds me that one point that Schilling made was Epstein knew how to respect the boundaries between front office and clubhouse; knew when it was time to come to the clubhouse and when he did knew how to conduct himself professionally with players, coaches and the rest of the field personnel. It's clear that Schilling respected Theo for that, and felt that Theo was respected and liked by the players and coaches as a result.
The stuff about the jersey suggests that the opposite is true of Kenney.
This is a distinct possibility, but isn't that enough reason to not want him in your teams front office? Especially in a relatively high ranking role? If he is a big enough #######, word will get around in baseball circles. It's a relatively small industry. It could make qualified people more wary of taking a job with the Cubs front office. On the other hand, he could just be a dick to the media for whatever reason, but perfectly fine to work with.
In which case, they could go after Pujols or Fielder. Or they could decide that they really needed a pitcher more and gone after Wilson, Buehrle, CC, or Darvish.
I think this is a distinct possibility anyway.
I'd still take actually having Gonzalez over just being in the hunt for the other guys.
Even IF he had baseball acumen it's STILL more management than necessary and now they're adding EVEN MORE management.
As far as I'm concerned it's just the Cubs continuing the upper-class twit of the year show, throwing money around to hire more levels of management. They've done that since at least the 40's. College of Coaches to College of GM's.
It's quite possible that the baseball side suffered but like I said earlier MacPhail did assemble a pretty good farm team and system. The thing that always hamstrung the Cubs was that the Tribune never wanted to go after the top rated free agents. Granted that might have been a good thing since a ton of them were busts during MacPhail's tenure. I remember Cubdom wanting the Cubs to go hard after Mike Hampton.
The scary part is that he made it through the sale. That means Ricketts likes him.
Ummmm what?
I don't think it's possible to have too many bright front office people.
As long as they get along and know their places.
Their front office may be smaller in total employees than the Yankees, but everyone knows the pecking order in NY has always been Owner-GM-field manager. The rest of the front office reports to the owner or GM and there's no confusion. With the Cubs it's always some mishmash of Board of Directors, CEO, Director of Baseball Ops, GM, field manager, etc. It enables dysfunction.
I don't think it's possible to have too many bright front office people.
A baseball organization is only going to be so big, you can't always make management positions for all of your bright people.
Really? The Yankee front office always seems to have a lot of people like Lonn Trost and Randy Levine who are clearly neither owner nor GM, and don't seem to do a whole lot other than get quoted in the newspapers.
And they are currently in San Diego right? Most likely La Jolla or Point Loma
Does the midwest have anything like this? Didn't think so...
I think this is probably true, with the additional problem that the Tribune Co. didn't care about anything but the balance sheets.
Ultimately, the owner has to care. Ricketts seems to care. I don't trust him to know anything about how to put together a winning ballclub, but as long as he knows to hire people who do, and fire them if they fail, that's fine with me.
What a bunch of ####### ######## we're about to hear if all this works out, if people are already complaining about the "MacPhail model". If you had told me six months ago that the Cubs would fire Hendry and hire Epstein, Hoyer, and whoever else Eps brings with him, I would have been overjoyed. Finally, the Cubs are getting serious about having a first-class baseball front office. Any Cubs fan who says otherwise is just lying their ass off.
I just want the organization to have a serious commitment to having a great baseball team, and this is the first time since at least MacPhail's hiring that they're radically restructuring the front office in search of better results. It's been a long time, so I don't care how many GMs they have or if the model's suspect (which I don't see why it is) or if Crane Kenney insists on taking batting practice with the team every day - right now they're making what looks like a serious push, and I'm just happy about that. This is an undisputable change in mindset for the organization, and I'm more than happy about that to suit me for now. I'll be happy to keep an open mind about the results until it's apparent it's not working.
Agreed, although I am way more optimistic about Epstein that I was about MacPhail, who didn't impress me with the Twins.
Maybe the Cubs will pay him more money than the Padres?
Winning, or the possibility of winning, is a powerful force.
Supposedly Moorad wanted Byrnes to be GM, but "respected Hoyer too much" i.e. didn't have enough of a reason to fire him.
As a fan of baseball I can only hope they bring success to a club which has suffered through it's share of misery and would love to see nothing more then the Cubs hoisting the trophy in 2013.(still prefer Sox for 2012)
Their front office may be smaller in total employees than the Yankees, but everyone knows the pecking order in NY has always been Owner-GM-field manager. The rest of the front office reports to the owner or GM and there's no confusion. With the Cubs it's always some mishmash of Board of Directors, CEO, Director of Baseball Ops, GM, field manager, etc. It enables dysfunction.
Huh?
The Yankee have historically fostered multiple power centers; the old Tampa vs. NY thing.
Some combination of execs and owners overruled Cashman just this winter and signed Rafael Soriano to an absurd contract.
The Yankee are definitively not an example of unity of command.
I'll leave it up to everyone else to comment on what this says about the Sox demands or the Cubs leaking stories.
Oh definitely. But the MacPhail hiring undoubtedly signified effort - a real attempt to address the problem of constantly sucking in a somewhat radical way.
The news of Hoyer coming over seems to undercut the Red Sox leverage, though, doesn't it? The idea that the Cubs would wait a year for Theo with a placeholder GM was a PR disaster, and gave the Sox the upper hand. The idea that Theo's choice for GM could start now, and the Sox could pay Theo to sit for a year, then get nothing for him, while the Cubs actually start doing things, levels the field. I would assume that the Red Sox are pissed about this, but that it pushes them into taking a package commensurate with other previous, similar compensations.
What about the media, for just re-running the same bits we saw from earlier in the week. There's nothing that really suggests that the Sox held hard and fast to these proposals, but instead just threw them out there.
But this makes a much juicer headline than "the Cubs refuse to include McNutt" and "the teams are haggling over A-ball prospects."
The Sox seem to adhere to the "there's no such thing as bad publicity approach".
This is pretty much what I said in post 3 of the other thread, absent the "peanuts" part, but, yes.
I have almost no opinion of Crane Kenney, because to be honest I don't even know what he does under Ricketts, and I have less idea on what he'll do once Theo arrives.
I suspect the official announcement will clear some of this up.
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