1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Cubs fire Jim Hendry

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Aug 19, 2011.

  1. Cubbiebum

    Cubbiebum Member

    The problem with this, and why those teams are at a distinct disadvantage is this, the Yankees and Red Sox has a whole roster of players who had great primes. Teams like the A's and Rays have to get very lucky to have a roster full of people who have great primes. It's near impossible to draft, develop and have 8-10 guys who are among the best of their position all hit their prime at the same time. The Yankees and Red Sox develop 1-4 of their own and then grab 8-10 in free agency. It is a huge advantage.
     
  2. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    1) Winning in the playoffs is a crapshoot. It's seldom that the favored teams even end up in the World Series, so I think if you're getting your team to the playoffs every year, you're doing a pretty good job as a general manager.

    2) It's hard for me to accurately judge Beane. Yeah, he hasn't done well lately. But his principles and ideas are being used by teams like the Red Sox and Rays pretty successfully. His payroll is so small that pretty much any move that backfires (the extension to Chavez) really handicaps the team. (In retrospect, pretty much all of those Oakland guys disappointed a little bit once they left Oakland - Giambi, Zito, Mulder's arm went to hell, Tejada, etc.)

    I think Moneyball was both a blessing and a curse for him. It gave him a much higher profile, and it got him a good amount of credit, but it seems that just as many people resent him for it. Heck, Joe Morgan is off on a farm somewhere, and he still thinks Billy Beane wrote that god damn book.
     
  3. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    It could be both a flawed approach *and* bad luck, but it's certainly at least partially bad luck. Anytime a MLB team goes 1-9 in any type of games, that's bad luck. I wouldn't expect the Astros to go 1-9 against the Yankees.
     
  4. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    That's the thing with Beane: *Maybe* he could replicate his success with a team with more money. But there are GM candidates out there who are *proving* they can win, right now. Let's get one of them.
     
  5. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    Yes. The primary benefit to having a large payroll is being able to pursue several different strategies or options at the same time. A team like Oakland can build via the farm system with arbitration and pre-free agent players, and, well, that's about it. The Red Sox can acquire pretty much any free agent they want, absorb larger contracts from other teams, aggressively draft guys above-slot, go after interesting "free talent" Major League free agents like David Ortiz (good) and Jeremy Giambi (bad), etc.
     
  6. suburbia

    suburbia Active Member

    If it's all about just getting to the playoffs and taking your chances, the Cubs should have just kept Jim Hendry as GM. He built three playoff teams, one of which had the best record in the National League during the regular season.

    The Cubs aren't the Pittsburgh Pirates who haven't sniffed winning in 20 years. Just making the playoffs is not good enough. Cubs fans want a championship, and I'm sure they'd prefer a GM with a track record of getting a lot closer to that level than Billy Beane has ever gotten. Think Pat Gillick.
     
  7. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Jim Hendry wasn't fired for an 8-game playoff losing streak.

    Jim Hendry was fired for only making the playoffs 3 times in 9 years despite having the 4th largest payroll in baseball over his tenure, in a small-market division.
     
  8. suburbia

    suburbia Active Member

    If he had won the World Series with the 2003 team or the 2008 team, he'd still have a job.

    Yes, it's not his fault Alex Gonzales booted the routine doubleplay grounder immediately after the Bartman incident in 2003. Though you could blame Jim Hendry for hiring a manager who had a track record of mismanaging pitching staffs and finding ways to lose big games. You could also blame Jim Hendry for anchoring his 2008 rotation with Carlos Zambrano (a total headcase) and Ryan Dempster (who remembered that he was Ryan Dempster as soon as the playoffs began).

    Let Billy Beane stay in small market Oakland where the fans are happy with just making the playoffs and he can get away with making excuses for his team not being able to close out playoff opponents.
     
  9. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    He might still have a job then, but he'd have a job for a bad reason.
     
  10. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    Billy Beane wish he got the chances Hendry got. He gave out some pretty silly contracts. Brian Sabean is proof that some people have the horseshoe up their ass despite some bad decisions, though.
     
  11. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Like Kenny Williams and Ozzie Guillen?

    There are still delusional fans who think that Carlos Lee-for-Scott Podsednik was a humdinger of a trade.
     
  12. suburbia

    suburbia Active Member

    Billy Beane's teams consistently crapped the bed in the playoffs, and did so in some truly mind-boggling ways. Ways that don't have anything to do with how big his budget was or wasn't. See Jeremy Giambi not sliding at home on Jeter's "backflip" in a potential closeout Game 3 of the 2001 playoffs. See Game 5 against Minnesota in 2002. See Games 3, 4 and 5 against the Red Sox in 2003.

    I know baseball does have a significant degree of randomness to it. But I'm sorry - when you go 1-9 in series close-out games, that's not an aberration. That's not a fluke. That's not just crappy luck. That's assembling a team of players who don't have the you-know-whats to get it done when it counts most.

    That's also what the Cubs have been for the last 103 friggin' years. And it's especially what they were under Jim Hendry. If you're looking for a new GM, why would you pick someone whose track record is the same?

    What do people remember the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals for? That they went only 84-78 in the regular season? Or that they won the World Series?

    And I'm sure Seattle Mariners fans would have gladly traded 25 of their 116 wins in 2001 to actually win the World Series.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page