What's Next?

Part Two of this look at the Cubs focuses on the decision to finally relieve Jim Hendry of his duties as General Manager of the Cubs after nine up and down years steering one of the most venerable MLB franchises.  It ended one of the most successful yet tumultuous periods in the long history of the franchise, one that yielded just as many dizzying highs as deep valleys. Here’s a short recap of some of the good, bad, and ugly moves Hendry made during his tenure.

The Good

The only Cubs GM to have three division titles/playoff appearances under his belt

Assembled the great 97-win team of 2008

Trading Todd Hundley for Mark Grudzielanek and Eric Karros before the 2003 season: dumping his own garbage on the Dodgers for two key cogs on a division champion was a very shrewd move

The ’03 mid-season trade of Bobby Hill and Jose Hernandez for Aramis Ramirez and  Kenny Lofton: Just a straight-up felony.  Hendry literally could have been arrested for stealing so much.  Lofton became the catalyst at the top of the order and Ramirez merely became the franchise third baseman the Cubs had been looking for since Ron Santo left in the early 1970s

Trading Hee-Seop Choi for Derrek Lee after the 2003 season: another complete steal. Trading away an always-promising but never performing prospect for a perennial Gold Glover/above-average hitter/clubhouse leader was a masterstroke

Getting Nomar in a multi-team swap at the 2004 trade deadline: this didn’t really work out in the end, but it sure seemed that adding Garciaparra to an already-potent lineup was the missing piece necessary to get over the NLCS hump, but the Cubs didn’t even make the playoffs.  Still, I remember being really pumped up upon hearing that news, and Nomar did play pretty well for the team down the stretch that year

The Rich Harden trade (otherwise known as the response to the Brewers getting CC Sabathia): Giving up exactly nobody and taking a flyer on the perpetually-injured Harden was a great gamble, as Harden was arguably the Cubs’ best pitcher down the stretch and threw a really good game in the Game 3 NLDS defeat in Los Angeles

The Bad

Trading three top pitching prospects for Juan Pierre: although Pierre did have 200 hits in his only season on the North Side, it was for an awful team and didn’t warrant giving up talent like Ricky Nolasco that could really be helping the team right now

Trading Milton Bradley for Carlos Silva: we’ll get to Bradley in a minute.  While it was necessary to get Bradley out of town, nobody thought the Cubs would ever get anything of value for him.  Silva actually did really well the first half of 2010, but fell apart in the second half and revealed himself to be something of a malcontent. The trade turned out to be a garbage-for-garbage deal that didn’t work out well for anyone

Soriano’s mega-deal and Zambrano’s extension: Even with all the rumors swirling that Hendry was pressured into his winter ’06 spending spree by higher-ups looking to boost the team’s value for its impending sale, his name will always be associated with Alfonso Soriano’s $136 million dollar, 8-year contract.  While Soriano helped carry the Cubs to the 2007/08 NL Central titles with hot Septembers, he disappeared in those playoffs, and his rapidly declining skills both at the plate and especially in the field make the 3 years and nearly $60 million remaining on his contract a financial albatross around the team’s neck.  Zambrano has never been the same since he was handed a $91.5 million extension, and probably will never throw another pitch for the Cubs again after his latest antics.  Wildly overpaying for mediocre players, unfortunately, turns out to be a hallmark of the Jim Hendry Era

The Ugly

The Milton Bradley signing: what really needs to be said? After the 2008 NLDS sweep, Lou Piniella repeatedly (and stupidly) stated that a left-handed bat would have made all the difference against the Dodgers.  So Hendry went out and blew up a team which somehow won 97 games without a great lefty hitter, and was noted for having great clubhouse chemistry, and brought in the biggest malcontent in the game.  You might remember the reports of Hendry talking to Bradley over dinner in Chicago before signing him, and man, good old Milt must have done a hell of a job selling himself to Hendry because the Cubs’ GM, while bidding against exactly nobody, wildly overpaid and gave Bradley $30 million. This whole thing ended, of course, with a disgruntled Bradley banished from the team for the last month of the season and traded away in the winter.  Hmmmm...sound familiar? 

So, bottom line, even though he did some good things and the Cubs were more successful during his tenure than ever before, it was time for change and thereby the end of the Jim Hendry era.  I’m actually fairly shocked that this occurred when it did - with over a month left to go in the regular season.  This signals to me that Tom Ricketts and, to a lesser extent, his siblings, actually do have a long-term plan for the success of the franchise.  Wrigleyville area than the actual product on the field.  But Ricketts clearly knew that he was going to go in a different direction after two highly disappointing seasons in 2010-11, and now that he has an entire month to go before the end of the season, he can begin his search for the next GM in earnest, and hopefully hire someone right after the World Series ends (or possibly before).  Having the new guy in place before free agency begins will be key, as the organization is at something of a crossroads personnel-wise, and this will be a very important off season in determining the direction of the franchise moving forward (more on that shortly).

The other big question this firing brings up, aside from who the next GM will be, concerns the fate of manager Mike Quade.  He was hired by Jim Hendry this past off season for only 2 years and $2 million.  It was pretty clear that he was a Hendry guy, and was given a chance with the big club after many years managing in the minor leagues, most recently with the Triple-A Iowa Cubs.  However, he’s shown himself to be a fairly poor major league manager, at least to this point.  I like his attitude, his heart seems to be in the right place, and there’s no doubt he’s doing the best he can with an admittedly lacking roster.  But his in-game tactical managing skills just aren’t up to par.  There have been multiple occasions this year where a pitcher was left in literally a batter too late, and the game was put out of reach; there’s been little to no action on the bases via hit and runs and the like, even with some hitters at the top of the lineup who are very capable of doing so; and the general sense is...he’s just in over his head.  There’s no doubt he’s doing the best he can with an admittedly lacking roster, but Quade is clearly not the long-term managerial solution.  And since a new GM will be taking over sometime in the next few months, presumably, his fate for even next year is heavily in doubt.  

His fate might already be sealed

Usually, the arrival of a new GM signals a sea change in how the organization operates from top to bottom; Cubs fans everywhere certainly hope that’s the case here.  And whoever the new GM is, he’s probably going to want to decide who he wants running the team on the field day to day is going to be.  That decision process is almost definitely not going to end up on Mike Quade as the answer.  So, that begs the question...who will be managing the Cubs when lineups are announced on Opening Day 2012? The answer to that question, in my opinion, should be Ryne Sandberg.  

I believe that Jim Hendry made one of the last, and biggest, mistakes of his tenure as GM when he chose to hire Mike Quade, an unknown, over Cubs legend Sandberg.  After applying for the job in the winter of 2006 with no managing experience under his belt, Sandberg was told by Hendry he’d be welcome to start in the minor leagues and prove himself worthy of the job.  Sandberg took on that challenge head-on, and managed at every level of the Cubs system while Lou Piniella managed the big club.  Sandberg, a Hall of Famer, rode the buses, stayed in the Motel 8’s of the world, and took his lumps like any other minor league manager trying to make it to the MLB.  Oh, and by the way, he won at every level, even leading the Triple-A Iowa Cubs to the best record in the Pacific Coast League last year.  That new found experience, combined with the fact that the Cubs are in rebuilding mode with several young players (who Sandberg probably coached at some point) being key pieces for the future, makes him an extremely attractive candidate for taking this team into the future, even though he got passed over for the job last year.    

He certainly looks the part

                                       

As an added incentive for management, he’s a bona fide Cubs legend, a popular Hall of Famer who the fan base would embrace wholeheartedly.  You think fans would take a couple losing seasons a little better if they knew the franchise had a direction and plan for the first time in awhile, and the man at the helm is someone a lot of them grew up idolizing? I think so.  He’d almost certainly bring his no-nonsense attitude to the clubhouse, something sorely lacking the last few years with the Bradley/Silva/Zambrano incidents.  He’d also instill a certain ethos in the team, one inherent in his character that is apparent in his Hall of Fame speech that angrily indicted the modern-day game for a lack of respect.  In short, he’d be a great choice to lead the Cubs out of the malaise of the last few years and into a new era under new owners and a new GM...we’ll see what happens come the end of the year.

That’s it on the Cubs for now...look for some thoughts on the Bears sometime soon in anticipation of the NFL season starting.  It’s about damn time...