New Miles article.....

[Diffusion]

 

What I would like to hear is:

 

"You know after a long time in this game I've come to the conclusion that I need to re-think some commonly held assumptions by Dusty, Gary, and myself. We need this organization, from instructional league to major league, to focus on the fundamentals,protecting outs, and becoming more patient at the plate. Our scouting department needs to begin to value production over tools. We need to draft better and then to do a better job of devloping players in our system. This includes looking to Latin America and the Pacific Rim. As a first step I've hired Leon Lee to be our director of scouting for the Pacific Rim. Finally, our pitching coaches need to focus on mechanics and throwing strikes.

 

We will begin working on these things today. Next year there will be no excuse for the lack of fundamental play exhibited by our ball club."

 

Last time I checked we included me. Look, if anyone thinks things are just peachy keen on Addison and Clarke they are deluding themselves. Hendry has done a piss poor job this past year handling resources as determined by turning the rescources into talent. Because of that the Cubs performance was medicore at best as determined by wins.

 

Sometimes people need a kick in the ass. There is no crying in baseball.

 

Last time I checked the "and myself" thing comes across as an absolute throw-away afterthought, and the "we" is used extremely vaguely to refer just to the Cubs, as opposed to the GM in particular.

 

Sure, sometimes people need a kick in the ass. But you do all of that in private. Behind closed doors. You don't think that I'd be slaughtering Baker and making it clear to him that his job is on the line in my office? But it's completely different to take things out into the public arena. Completely different, and sensationally stupid too. Learn something about PR.

 

As for the job that Hendry did, he's had by far his worst season this last year. He gave away a lot of talent last off-season for the sake of warm and fuzzy feelings in the clubhouse, he was seemingly part of a disgraceful anti-Sosa campaign that consumed far too much of his off-season, and only resulted in a pathetic haul for Sosa, all while limiting the job that he did filling other starting positions, he insured against injuries terribly on the whole, and he signed too many players that he should have known Dusty was likely to be tempted to misuse. During the season, he seemingly allowed a lot of Dusty's ridiculous moves (top of the order, jerking around with LF, the Ronny Cedeno debacle, the Matt Murton over-cautiousness, ) to go too far, and he made just two good deals all season, Dubois for Gerut, which he promptly two weeks later or so undid with one of a good number of bad ones, and the Hawkins deal, though that was in part only ever necessary because Hendry didn't insist more rigorously on his gut instinct of Dempster for closer. He also failed to move talent at the deadline (or earlier) that he really ought to have been selling as high as possible on (Mitre, Wellemeyer and Hill in particular), on numerous occasions he got the Cubs bench and Iowa mixed up, and he didn't fire Dusty Baker or insist on any coaching changes. And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure I've forgotten stuff.