Epstein, Hoyer to Cubs

I want to say that my previous post was a joke. Epstein is highly competent. He might even do better without the "OMG the Yankees did this, that or the other" imperative he was working under in Boston. At least the Cubs know they're a long-range project. As we have seen, two years in a row of missing the playoffs in Boston means everyone gets fired. That concept breeds a lot of Carl Crawfords and John Lackeys on the roster.
GMs don't set the franchise culture like that, so in a very real sense, Epstein has far more of a chance to be himself in Chicago than he had here. Whether that means he'll succeed, of course nobody knows.

 

If Kenny Williams can win a World Series, Epstein should win 20, maybe 25.

 

Yes, but for the better part of the last decade, they've been pretty consistently an 80-90-win team -- from 2001-08, they made three postseason appearances and won at least 85 games four times in those eight years ... they really only had two wretched seasons in that stretch -- 2002 and 2006 -- so it's not like they've had Pirates-level draft picks for the last decade. However, their drafting and player development have been gawdawful under Jim "I don't need a computer" Hendry and Epstein should be a major factor in retooling both.

 

They've consistently underperformed vis a vis their evident talent levels since '45 . . . when William Wrigley passed,
they were left with Phil W., who started selling the beautiful ballpark and the afternoon out of doors rather than a
team, which largely sucked rocks for twenty years after WWII.

 

Thank you. I'll never say another bad word about you.

I'm now hoping Friedman gets a new job. Let's see what he can do when the team President isn't his best friend from childhood, when he doesn't have Gerry Hunsicker holding his hand, and when he doesn't have top draft picks every year.

David Price was a consensus number one pick. Any GM in baseball would have chosen him. Longoria was third overall. You didn't need Andrew Friedman to pick him either.

They got lucky a couple of years ago with Carlos Pena, but that was purely a salary move. It wasn't some stroke of genius, it was a stroke of luck.

Guys like Upton, Crawford, and Niemann are Chuck LaMar draft choices.

And, while the Rays are still cheap as shit, Friedman's been given a much more payroll flexibility, which has allowed him to draft the best available player.

Previous ownership didn't always let LeMar pick the best player. And, it took six months to get Niemann signed.

Since 2009, the rays have had seven first round picks. Instead of the usual top three picks, the lowest pick of the seven was number 17.

Let's see if one of these guys pans out before we decide Friedman is some kind of genius.

 

It's not Friedman's drafts. It's the trade history.

I think Silverman is the brains of the bunch here but Friedman isn't a moron. You don't dump the Yankees and Red Sox on their asses for a quarter on the dollar by a few lucky drafts. I resist all kinds of ass-tonguing and genius-labelling. But give them their due. These guys are pretty damned smart. Smarter than Epstein. What they have done ought to be studied in MBA programs.

In other news:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2011/10/23/farrell_was_seen_as_sox_manager_and_still_could_be/

The Red Sox don't realize what an awful in-game tactician this guy is. They just want a babysitter.

 

Five years from now, I do not expect Epstein to have won the world series. The man is being brought into to rebuild the scouting and development organization from the ground up, and it's going to take five years just to begin to see the results of that.

Five years from now, I want the Cubs to have the minor-league system, front-office know-how and financial resources of a team poised to go on a run like the Red Sox (7 playoff appearances in 10 years, 3 near misses) or the Cardinals (8 playoff appearances in 12 years). Given their financial resources compared to the rest of the division, that is not *that* tall of an order.

If they go on a decade-long run of making the playoffs and never win the World Series, or even make it, that'd suck, but Epstein will have done all he could have done and God just hates them or something.

 

The Cubs pushed their way to mediocrity in the last decade with free-agent spending. Their drafts really have been that horrible.

 

The Red Sox had a farm system that bore some pretty good fruit before Epstein came down from Mount Olympus.

This is a GM who didn't develop a homegrown shortstop in almost 10 years, and the one he did he traded away instantly.

 

A brief history explaining why the Cubs have not won the World Series in so long.

1909-1940s - They were an above-average National League team and won a lot of pennants, but just didn't finish the job.

1950s-1970s - The Wrigley ownership ran them like the Pirates are run now. They refused to spend significant money on prospects and scouting in the pre-draft era. There's a great story in the team history book Wrigleyville talking about how the only reason they got Santo was because the scout was friends with him. They lowballed him severely compared to what other teams were offering.

1980s-1990s - A moderate amount of spending, but a run of mediocre front offices and still a bit on the cheap side.

2000s - Tribune Company opens up the spending on the major-league team and anything flashy, but MacPhail doesn't see the need to invest in making the organization modern from top to bottom.

 

Hey, if Epstein even gets the Cubbies TO the World Series, win or lose, he could run for mayor of Chicago AND governor of Illinois and win both ... and do so WITHOUT the help of the Cook County/Daley political machine ...

 

And he got a No. 1 starter and an all-star third baseman/World Series MVP for Hanley Ramirez. It's not like he was fleeced on that trade.