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What do you mean good for him?

Kerry retiring doesn't really change things, I don't think. I doubt he was expected back anyway. From the sound of it, they're still considering veterans like Hasselbeck, Pennington and others so that they don't have to start Locker right away.

Which if true might make him better than some of those "better options waiting in the minors". This is especially true when you consider the Cubs' record on developing position players. It might, but it might also make him worse than some of those "better options waiting in the minors." The point is, Barney isn't a good enough player at this point to not give those other options a shot when they're deemed ready. Barney's defense does make him more valuable than just looking at his offense would indicate (he's been a 1.0 WAR player so far) but even taking his defense into account doesn't make him so valuable that we shouldn't be willing to try minor leaguers with more offensive potential.

His age and likely contract concern me. The numbers are perfectly fine, but he's 36 and those numbers indicate he'd get a contract that could take him very close to 40 (3-4 years maybe?). If we could get him on a 1-2 year deal, however, that'd be something to consider.

Recent midseason GM changes: 2010 - Arizona fires Josh Byrnes; Jerry DiPoto promoted from within 2009 - Toronto fires Ricciardi; Anthopolous promoted from within 2009 - Jim Bowden resigns in March; Mike Rizzo promoted from within 2008 - Seattle fires Bill Bavasi; Lee Pelekoudas promoted from within 2008 - Cincinnati fires Wayne Krivsky; Walt Jocketty promoted from within 2007 - Houston fires Tim Purpura; Tal Smith promoted from within 2007 - Pittsburgh fires Dave Littlefield; Brian Graham promoted from within There wasn't a single incident that I saw within the past 3-5 years where a GM was fired midseason and an interim GM was not promoted from within. Out of that group, three of the interims (Anthopolous, Rizzo and Jocketty) remained full time while in every other case a permanent GM was named after the season.

To go along with what CCP said, MacPhail was a former GM who had experience in that role and could handle it. Kenney isn't going to feel the same way about taking over that MacPhail did.

Why does this ridiculous notion keep getting repeated? Because that's what happens? You don't believe that when a GM is fired midseason, he's generally replaced by an interim GM promoted from within? I don't believe it's the only real option. What other quality option is out there? Teams won't give us permission now to interview and hire currently employed front office members, so that pretty much leaves convincing a guy like Pat Gillick to come out of retirement to take over as GM (very unlikely to be realistic) or to go after an unemployed GM who is very likely unemployed because he wasn't very good. Can you think of other options that could/should be considered?

My preference would be for the Ricketts to bring in a Sandy Alderson type team president (others have mentioned Pat Gillick and that could actually be realistic) and let him make the decisions on firing Hendry, who to replace him with, etc.

Why does this ridiculous notion keep getting repeated? Because that's what happens? You don't believe that when a GM is fired midseason, he's generally replaced by an interim GM promoted from within?

Exactly. A real transition won't begin until the Ricketts bring in a permanent GM. At that point the new GM would begin the transition of articulating the new organizational philosophy, bringing in his own people and doing all the other things a new GM does. The only way bringing in an interim GM from outside the organization would help start this transition is if Ricketts knew that interim GM would share many of the same philosophies the permanent GM will have and will value the same types of players the permanent GM would. Bringing in an interim GM from outside the organization who has clearly different ideas from the previous and the next regimes would only serve to much things up even worse rather than anything positive.

How can someone not in any way associated with the team previously help you transition to a completely different GM? He's almost certain to have a different philosophy from Hendry and a different one from the new GM who will take over, so he would make trades for players he likes (after having participated in little to no player evaluation for who knows how long) but those players may be completely different from what the new GM wants. Then you have the issue of whether the retired guy you bring in is actually high quality. Pat Gillick would probably be a good hire if you could coax him out of retirement, but I don't know why he'd want to take the job for just three months. And I know Cox was just an example likely off the top of your head, but he's a very old school type guy who likes his grit and small ball despite how good a manager he was. Would his player evaluations and trades mirror in any way a potentially more progressive GM the Ricketts might bring in? Or if he's helping in the search for a new GM would he go after the more progressive types, or those who are more similar to his philosophy? Even if you take the name Cox out of that sentence, many of your older, currently retired GM/managers are going to have more of an old school mentality. Is that interim GM going to be better than Hendry? If not, why make a move until you can bring in a permanent guy? I don't remember it happening a lot, but I don't think it's a wildly rare occurence either. However, when a midseason GM change is made, I'm pretty certain it's always or almost always followed by a guy inside the organization being promoted to interim GM, primarily because that's the only real option. Is Randy Bush going to be better than Hendry? If you're not fairly confident he will be, then I don't see the point in the move. Why go from one averagish GM to a potentially worse GM?

Because these people are under contract the same as in every professional and collegiate sport. No one under contract is allowed to talk with other teams without the permission of their current employer. MLB could be the lone exception to this rule, but I highly doubt that. And GMs want those under them to get promotions, true, but not right before the trade deadline when the future of their organization is on the line. Teams in contention will want their top FO people and best young assistant GMs to stick around to give them the best chance possible to win, while teams out of the race want their best and brightest around to help them rebuild the team in preparation for next year. If the Ricketts come calling in August or September, there's a chance that permission would be granted and certainly it would be in the offseason. But a GM/team president/etc wants their team to win first and foremost and see promotions for their guys second, so there's no way they'd grant permission for an interview during one of the most important times of the year (trade deadline). It's certainly possible Ricketts intends to keep Hendry, but I don't see how keeping him through the season is an indication of that. I expect Randy Bush to take over if Hendry is fired in season because that's how it almost always happens. The GM is fired midseason and his top assistant (Randy Bush) takes over. Could they go get some old, retired guy to take over the team for 3 months? Sure, but I don't see why that retired guy would be interested in taking over a team for just three months and, probably largely for that reason, that scenario never really happens.

Anyone who is currently under contract with a major league baseball franchise in any front office, managerial or coaching capacity can only be interviewed or hired by the Cubs if their current employer gives permission. That includes current GMs, assistant GMs, team presidents, managers, etc. Thus, if Hendry were fired tomorrow, there would be two options open to Tom Ricketts to fill the vacancy: promote an interim GM from within or hire someone not currently employed by a major league franchise in any capacity. If we could drop Hendry and hire Rick Haun tomorrow, I'd be perfectly fine with that. But it cannot happen because the Sox would not give us permission to interview their top assistant certainly before the trade deadline, if not after. The almost certain outcome of a midseason Hendry firing would be a promotion to interim GM for Randy Bush because that's practically the only decision that could be made.

The Buck Coats for Marcos Mateo deal was a pretty good one. Mateo is 2 years younger than Coats and while neither has been worth many wins (.1 for Mateo, .2 for Coats), Coats hasn't seen the majors since 2008 while Mateo is looking like a decent, cheap middle reliever. The Harden deal was a very good trade as well. We didn't get the fantastically dominant Harden for an extended period like we had hoped, but Harden was worth 4 WAR as a Cub alone, while the players the Cubs gave up have combined for a -1.1 WAR. The DLee and Gorzo trades have yet to be determined prospects who may be helpful down the line. Neither major leaguer the Cubs gave up have done much of anything since leaving Chicago.

Since dropping EI I've only been able to watch a handful of games and one of those was with Hawk and Stone, so I haven't heard much of Brenly this year. Len is definitely significantly more progressive, though, and it'd seem that mentality would rub off on Brenly as long as they've been working together.

He has a very traditional mindset and is a big fan of small ball principles - meaning we'd likely see a relatively large amount of sac bunts/steal attempts/etc. He also appears to buy into the myths of Aramis being lazy, Z being a headcase being a huge negative, gritty, terrible baseball players are awesome, that kind of stuff. Similar arguments to those against Ryno managing this year.

I've not seen arguments that firing Quade (or a manager) in-season is pointless. In most cases it may be, but if a team is still in contention despite the manager or if the manager is needlessly endangering pitchers, then there's ample reason to make a midseason move.

Maybe he's saying we should hire Kobe Bryant to take over for Hendry - that'd be the positive for letting Hendry go now since Kobe could start immediately.

I'll ask again - how are the Cubs better by firing Hendry immediately? How does it benefit the team/franchise/organization by firing him and replacing him with an interim GM? I have trouble believing there are great GM candidates sitting around at home unemployed.

I can come up with a ton of reasons - Hendry is pretty good at trades, Randy Bush may not be good at trades, Randy Bush may be desperate to try to win the full-time job, we can't interview/hire currently employed GM candidates in-season anyway, Hendry might be a little more up to date on some of the draft picks we took than Bush. What are the tangible benefits to firing Hendry midseason?

How's that? I'd rather give the new guy a few months to evaluate the team and Quade before Oct. 1st. What's the benefit to firing Hendry mid-season? As CCP pointed out, we can't hire a new guy until after the season (unless Ricketts is targeting a currently unemployed GM), but also we probably can't even interview a currently employed candidate until after the year. So our best case scenario is having Randy Bush take over as interim GM for the rest of the season and go through the same process of finding a permanent GM after the year, just like we would if we had kept Hendry.

Here's a link.

Figured this was the best place to put this as I hadn't seen it elsewhere: From Bruce Miles' blog today

That's a good point about the Cubs working under the radar. I hadn't thought about that before posting. Interesting, I had assumed they'd begin the initial contract negotiations and whatnot shortly after the draft. I'm much more familiar with the NFL draft than the MLB draft, so I had mistakenly assumed they worked similarly (teams had a good idea what they were going to offer prior to drafting the player and worked from the start on talking the player down toward that number).

I'd rather sign the draft guys, because they're at least slightly more developed. That said, we've heard from basically everyone within the organization that we're spending more money in both areas, so I don't think they're connected in any way. That's kind of what I was thinking on the draft guys, more polished and you know a little more what you've got. With the focus on HS kids in the draft we had this year, the upside gap is probably smaller between the draftees and international kids anyway. On how the money is divvied out, I'm hopeful that you're right, but my question rose out of the perception that nobody (that I saw) was expecting the Cubs to shell out 7 figures to Acosta, so it coming as a relative surprise might indicate something has changed in their expectations on the draftees. I'm not really saying they aren't planning to spend more on both, just that the Acosta signing for 1.1 mil caught me off guard and made me wonder if something spurred them to act on him.