LuvChicagoSports

I'm not sure if this is the right area for this topic, but it's speculative or wishful transactions. Let's say that Ricketts fires Hendry day 1 on the job and hires you as the GM. You are given a budget of $145 million. What are your ***REALISTIC*** plans for this offseason.

What is your definition of a good GM then? Everyone seems to want to pick up on irrelevant little mistakes by Banks (like Beane not writing Moneyball), instead of addressing the argument. I don't blame them, it is much easier to mock someone and take the attention away from the valid points they make, rather than disputing them. You are right, Beane has a lower payroll. But, you seem to be implying that as long as you are in a small market team it is ok to lose season after season. I disagree with the premise that small market team GM is automatically given a pass. In last three years, Hendry run teams have made it to the playoffs 2 of 3 times or 66.667% of the time. Beane run teams have made it 0 of 3 times or 0% of the time. Yet somehow Hendry is a terrible GM and Beane is a good GM? There seems to be a disconnect. Do you measure a good GM by wins? Playoff appearances? Surely you would agree that even small market teams have to have some sort of criteria by which to gauge effectiveness. I agree with you and I think Beane gets a pass because of his past. If the losing continues then of course he gets axed and he would deserve it. If he were the Cubs GM the last three seasons with that record, I would say he deserves to get fired. When your team is poor and doesn't provide you with the resources needed to stay competitive, I think you deserve a few more years of bad play to get it all together, but you do not deserve a free pass forever because you are a small market club. My definition of a good GM is someone that consistently makes smart, efficient moves. Of course some moves aren't going to work out, but if there is a consistent pattern of good moves it will show. Hendry consistently makes terrible moves when it comes to payroll. Neifi Perez, Jose Macias, Mike Remlinger, Kevin Gregg, Aaron Miles, and Joey Gathright to name a few. Just looking at these guys and ignoring the big contracts of our current OF shows that he doesn't spend money wisely. VORP is a good statistic to keep in mind when looking to sign a bench player. Is his value really worth 2 years for 5 million or can you bring up a AAA player for the same production and make better use of the money? Then you cannot look at a GM of a baseball team without looking at what the farm system has done while under his control. There is no other way to put it than the Cubs have completely failed in that aspect under his control. People will talk about Hendry's good trades for Ramirez and Lee. He took advantage of poor teams inability to keep their own players and he deserves credit for that. He did determine which players had high value and didn't give up much to get them. But he also deserves blame for trades that didn't work out well and for the lack of a quality farm system. With Beane and Hendry it is unfair to look at only the past 3 seasons as they have both been in control for significantly longer. Since 2003 (Hendry's first full season) Beane's A's have gone 594-539 while Hendry's Cubs have gone 587-545. Beane has lost key players through that entire time and had significantly less money to work with. The bottom line is that Hendry's body of work is not impressive when you look at the financial advantage he has had over the competition. The Cubs MUST compare themselves to the Red Sox an Yankees because the payroll is closer to those teams than the Marlins and A's. If Hendry had a 587-545 record as GM of the Yankees in 7 seasons of work there wouldn't even be a question of if he will still have a job. He would have been canned a while ago. The Cubs spend like a winning organization, so the results need to reflect that.

I think it's comical that people want to point out Beane's record since Zito left. How about the fact that other GM's in baseball now abide by the same philosophies? The fact that Theo Epstein looks at the same numbers, just as one example, but has far greater resources available makes it even harder on Beane. The book Moneyball was an attempt to explain how the A's were competitive in an unfair game. Since that book was written, statistical analysis in the front office has become much more accepted and much more common. The tools that Beane was using to give him an advantage over teams with money don't work as much now because other teams with more money will pay more for guys that Beane would target. It is absurd to think that teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, and Dodgers don't have an advantage over the competition simply based on the idea that they can buy the players they want. The Yankees and Red Sox keep developing talent from their system in addition to spending in free agency which is what has really made those organizations so great on a consistent basis. Sure a Tampa Bay can be good and catch lightning in a bottle every once in a while, but without financial resources the window is small to remain that competitive. I won't say that Beane would be a great GM here for sure because he has never had a big payroll to work with and I don't know how wise he would be with the money, but Hendry has played with a HUGE advantage over the competition and doesn't have the results needed to keep his job. The Cubs past history shouldn't come into play here because until recently the Cubs did not play with the advantage that they do now. Are you ok paying such high prices with such poor results?

Hendry has ZERO business still having a job. He has a huge advantage over his competition and consistently makes terrible decisions. Not offering arbitration would just continue a trend that Hendry has set. He doesn't know how to utilize all the tools that are available to build a great organization. He failed as a GM. Time to move on.

I cannot stand anything about the way this team is run. I certainly hope Ricketts doesn't stand for this nonsense. This management group is TERRIBLE. The team WILL NEVER win it all with the status quo. It is incredibly frustrating that Jim Hendry is allowed to make decisions while we await the ownership change. He has already hampered the future because of ill advised decisions and I don't have any faith that he has the ability to make a good decision.

I wrote an article delving into this topic. I wrote how the Cubs can keep Crane Kenney but still bring in another guy to run baseball operations. I think it is very important for the Cubs to bring in the right pieces now and not wait so they can begin to fix the enormous problems that are facing the organization. It will be VERY easy for the next GM to blame the mess on Hendry to get some slack from the press. He can simply point to untradeable contracts and a lack of organizational depth and there is nothing the media can do to prove him wrong.

Bill Hall along with any other player that falls off a cliff like that are going to face speculation that they were PED users. I don't know if he did it or not, but I do think it is fair to speculate because if he didn't he should have lobbied like hell (and he didn't) to have his union out the guys that did.

Here is an interesting take on starting to fix the problems that have come up. Clearly it doesn't address fixing the roster problems, but it could start to address what is the core of the problem (overspending, lack of organizational talent, and no elite talent from within own system). Getting a new GM and director of player development (potentially the guys mentioned in the article) would certainly be a way to begin addressing the issues. The hard part is going to be turning over the talent that is currently on the roster. There are untradeable contacts and players with no trade clauses.

I wrote about this here, but Jake Fox needs to not only stay on the roster, he needs to play. I think the three moves that make the most sense are sending down Fuld (Johnson takes his place as 5th OFer) Hart, and Shark. We can go 11 man pen until the break and then they will decide which position player goes.

I would be happy with this trade. Mets have to get pitching so that's why they do it, and we get rid of the bad Fukudome contract. I like Lilly a lot, but think the Cubs would be OK without him. Beltran playing in Wrigley would be VERY good. Would leave us with 2 really bad contracts left to get rid of. Lee and Soriano. I can't see the Cubs being able to get rid of either of those players barring a major injury with a contending team.

Yeah I like that one. I think about writing it pretty much everyday. One of my big additions to what you have already written is that they gave a pretty big contract to Ryan Dempster which essentially was the money they needed to have Peavy in Chicago.

Hey everyone! I run a blog and was curious if anyone had any ideas on certain Cubs topics they would like to see written about. I have a post that I am currently working on about Z's planned retirement, but if anyone else has some ideas please share. Sorry guys took down the link so as not to make it about advertising. Just looking to find something to write that would resonate well with educated fans. Thanks!

It's sad to know that Hendry would pass on a lineup that looks like this: Hanley Ramirez - SS Placido Palanco- 2b Albert Pujols - 1b Alex Rodriguez- 3b Magglio Ordonez- RF Matt Holiday - CF Vladimir Guerrero - LF Russell Martin - C I based this lineup on two things. The players must be right handed hitters only with no switch hitting ability. These are all the top players at their position based off of last seasons VORP (given that they only hit right handed). Hendry would hate this because the team lacks in speed, the defense isn't good enough, and there is no left handed bats. I'm not saying he would dislike the lineup, but I think he would rather have a guy like Pierre in CF to add speed and range in the OF which is a terrible terrible thought.

You seem to have a pretty set way of thinking so I'm not sure if you would be interested, but I would like to suggest a couple of readings merely to broaden your thoughts on the game. The first book I would suggest is "Moneyball" which is certainly not new reading material, but it is a very simple read that does a good job of introducing statistical ideas. If you feel like reading a book that is a little more advanced in sabermetrics, I would suggest "Baseball Between the Numbers" by the basball prospectus group. I feel that I am much more knowledgeable having read these books as well as others. I'm not saying it's what I would qualify as the only way to think about the game, but it certainly does suggest ideas that are worth thinking about and studying. It's not too long ago that I thought the Cubs needed a player like Juan Pierre and now I cringe at the idea that I thought things like that.

This is all fan perception and not what team scouting departments and front office members are saying. When it really comes down to it, what the fans think means nothing. I hate admitting this because I like to think my opinions and thoughts have some value, but honestly if it was all about fan perception, the Cubs could have traded Corey Patterson for just about anyone or anything when he was first coming up. They probably could have traded him for a lot, but you know GM's like Billy Beane would have been skeptical of players like that. Simply put, we don't know what scouts think about Murton and Jackson they could see them as virtually the same "players with some good potential, but haven't really displayed if they can do it consistently or not" or they might see them as on different levels. It's probably pretty safe to assume most teams wouldn't look at things the same as all other teams.