For
the speculation already has gone to who will wind up managing the Cubs for the
next few seasons – the ones that the die-hards are convinced will produce the
long-awaited championship that everybody EXCEPT the Cubs seems capable of
winning.
ALL
OF THIS talk started up when Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon used an escape
clause to get out of his contract. Maddon has led the previously-feeble Rays to
winning records in recent years AND an American League championship in 2007.
Which
has the baseball world thinking he can probably pick whichever ball club he
wants to work for as a next job. Cubs-oriented people are convinced he’s going
to want to come to Chicago.
Even
though the Cubs went out of their way to fire their former manager and hire
someone new just a year ago. Anybody remember Rick Renteria – who supposedly
was a wisened baseball man with the ability to relate to young talent in a way
that he’d develop the Cubs prospects into a championship team?!?
He
might as well be just another interim manager; just waiting for the players to
develop so the Cubs can bring in someone experienced for the possible Cubs championship
in 2016 or 2017.
WHICH
IS A line of thought that makes me all the more skeptical that the Cubs will
ever amount to anything in the next few seasons.
Impulse
shopping when it comes to personnel is a large part of what can bring down a
professional sports franchise. Heck, the New York Yankees have some convinced
they’re not going to win a thing in the near future because they’re still stuck
with past-their-prime ball players who are making big-name money so that they
can’t easily be unloaded.
I’m
not convinced Maddon is actually coming to Chicago. Even if he does wind up
working in the Lake View neighborhood, I’m not convinced he is enough to ensure
that a Cubs team would actually win something of significance.
I’m
Cubskeptical because I have seen throughout the decades that I have followed
baseball that prospects don’t always pan out the way their minor league
statistics and scouting reports hint they ought to.
CUBS
FANS OUGHT to feel lucky if one of their so-called blue chip prospects turns
into a long-term regular ballplayer for the ball club. The fact that Cubs
management is putting so much emphasis on prospects makes me think nothing will
happen.
Particularly since the major league
level activity we have seen thus far hasn’t been that outstanding. Let’s be
honest. The best rookie ballplayer for a Chicago team in this decade likely is
to be Jose Abreu – the Cuban defector whose 2014 season with the Chicago White
Sox was good enough to win him Rookie of the Year honors.
I’m not saying the White Sox are
anywhere near to winning a championship. But I’d have to think they’re closer
than the Cubs – even though both of them had mediocre 73-win seasons this year.
I’d hate to be in Renteria’s position
these days, where his fate depends on factors and whims that are so far beyond
his control.
BUT IT MAKES me wonder if the last laugh
is now going to the man who once was the Cubs manager until the team decided
that Renteria was the real long-term choice.
That would be Dale Sveum – who led Cubs
teams to truly dreadful losing seasons in 2012 and 2013 before being fired.
He’s now the hitting coach with the
Kansas City Royals, whose staff also includes one-time White Sox player Rusty
Kuntz (middle-age White Sox fans are now giggling) as first base coach – who if
circumstances go right could both be with a World Series-winning team by week’s
end.
The so-called loser who was too inept to
work for the Cubs could have a World Series ring (if the Royals prevail on Tuesday and Wednesday) long before anybody wearing the
baby blue of Cubdom does.
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