Cubs trades and players of the past regime to present

[CSF77]

Eh, Im a big believer if you work hard enough that you can overcome any situation. I dont think if Donaldson stayed on the Cubs he wouldnt have made it. Work and talent trump all.

With the Cubs track record I wouldn't bet on it...Ehm Vitters and Cory Patterson say hi.

 

[CSF77]

Bottom line is Hendry has a draft history of picking crappy 1st rounders who had no college fall out plan to lowball them. Then they used that cash saved to get harder to sign guys later round. Ehm Shark. 1st round picks thatg were legit: Cashner. Vitters was the best HS bat but never panned out. Jackson: Theo though he was too good to be true...and bingo he was right. Theo said they would have passed on Baez and ya he is a work in progress and didn't add adapt quickly like Bryant and Soler did.

It really is not even close to be honest. Through trade they got Arrieta, Hendricks and Wood. 3/5ths of the rotation. Rule V their closer. Set up via trade. 7th inning guy (DL) trade. 3B Draft, 2B trade, 1B trade, LF F/A lowball sign. CF trade for spare parts, RF international signing, Catcher trade, most of the pen via trades. (Not sure on Rosecup).

Theo has taken a bunch of flack from the media and certain (ex)posters around here. And after it is all said and done where are they right now? Playing winning baseball with out shelling out 150 mil while still having plenty of trade assets sitting...ya they could trade for a league ace if they need to....

 

[beckdawg]

My problem with Hendry was a philosophical one. He was a very win now GM. While obviously some of that later was pushed by ownership, if you look at the vast majority of his early moves such as signing Alou, trading for Lee, Harden, and Nomar they are moves that are designed to win today. I don't necessarily blame him because he was a big city GM in a time where people thought that's how you ran things as a big market club. In essence, you threw money at the problem to be good every year. The Yankees did it. The Mets did it. Various other teams did.

With that being said, I've never liked this approach. It almost always leads to 2-3 years of being good followed by 2-3 years of bad. From there the cycle repeats. The problem I have with it is that getting everything to fall into place in those short cycles is exceedingly hard. One injury kills your chances. This goes into comments I previously made early in the rebuild. People often stated something to the effect of "this isn't how a big market team should operate." I always commented "Why?" The expectations were largely if you make lots of money you should throw it on FAs. That never made much sense to me. I'd much rather see a team throw money into development. You look at a guy like Torres who the cubs spent around $3 mil to sign as an IFA and compare that to what $3 mil gets you in terms of free agents and it's not even close. Of course you have to throw several years of development at IFAs and who knows where that goes but at the same time if you consistently do a good job developing players you will have trade pieces to acquire talent quicker too.

So, while I don't think Hendry was necessarily a bad GM, I don't think his philosophy was a good one. The teams that are often good for 5+ years almost always are that way because of players they developed. Even if you want to talk about the Yankees they had a core of Bernie Williams, Jeter, Posada, and Rivera combined with other additions of Cano and Soriano at various points. They obviously supplemented that with FA's and trades but the core was there.

 

[CSF77]

Cards have grown their own talent. Tell me that that is a broken method.

 

[CSF77]

IMO cubs fans were lead to believe that self development was a failed path beause of Hendty's track record of failed prospects.

Look back to Dallas Green and see Grace, Palmero, Maddux. Ya all of his work. Early trades brought Sandburg over. Traded for Sutcliff

Sad thing was the Trib were too cheap to retain Maddux and add a solid rotation around him.

Hendry was in win mode because the Trib was up for sale. That is why payroll went up. That is why the bandwagon fans jumped on with the whole Cubs are big market non sense.

They only see what they want to see and refuse to see anything else.

 

[Diehardfan]

The problem with Hendry was that he couldn't draft for shit. He made some great moves no doubt. Highlighted by the Lee and Ramirez trades, I'd even argue landing Soriano was a great move, but to be a consist contender you can't miss on every one of your 1st round draft picks. During the Hendry regime, the Cubs were terrible at developing players, and scouting.

Remember when Theo came in and someone had to teach Soriano how to play defense in LF, because nobody ever taught him before? You can see the difference between those developed by the new regime and the old regime. Specifically when it comes to plate discipline.

Not surprising. The overall fundamentals in this franchise has been nothing short of brutal for a very long time. You had small gaps where managers would come in and demand they invest a lot of time in it but for the most part it's been lacking. That's one thing I've noticed about this regime...many more things are instigated by upper management than they have in the past.

 

[Diehardfan]

Cards have grown their own talent. Tell me that that is a broken method.

Exactly. I dropped off the Cubs bandwagon a few years after the upchuck that ended 2003. Mostly because I couldn't stand the way they tried to win or attenpted to build a winner. I hated it when they went all "Yankees" on us with trying to buy a winner. The big difference is that the Yankees always had a good foundation with a strong minor league base to work off of. The Cubs had nothing but a bunch of bad draft picks and a mittful of cash. I've always thought the best way is to build from within....set up a strong foundation of young talent then fill in the cracks with free agency. It was a painful few years to get to that but Theo and company appears to have pulled it off. For that, I am a grateful fan.

 

[TC in Mississippi]

Not surprising. The overall fundamentals in this franchise has been nothing short of brutal for a very long time. You had small gaps where managers would come in and demand they invest a lot of time in it but for the most part it's been lacking. That's one thing I've noticed about this regime...many more things are instigated by upper management than they have in the past.

People laughed when Theo came in talking about instituting a "Cubs Way" but the results of that, as they do often in good organizations, have really started to manifest. In 2003 a friend of mine was writing features/sports for a Chicago area publication and was assigned to write a feature on the Cubs minor league system. What he found shocked him. Prospects were being taught different things at different levels and so when they would be promoted often they were given entirely new things to work on and things they had spent time on were downplayed. The piece never ran as my friend's editor felt that if it had it would hurt their relationship with the Cubs and limit access. My friend more or less quit in protest and took a job outside of journalism. After that I paid a lot of attention to some of the prospects that came up and how confused they look. Also things like Dusty Baker's ridiculous statement that walks "clog the base paths" made a perverse kind of sense. I don't know if we'll ever know if Hendry's issue with minor league players was drafting or development or a combination of the two but one thing for sure there was no "Cubs Way".

 

[SilenceS]

People laughed when Theo came in talking about instituting a "Cubs Way" but the results of that, as they do often in good organizations, have really started to manifest. In 2003 a friend of mine was writing features/sports for a Chicago area publication and was assigned to write a feature on the Cubs minor league system. What he found shocked him. Prospects were being taught different things at different levels and so when they would be promoted often they were given entirely new things to work on and things they had spent time on were downplayed. The piece never ran as my friend's editor felt that if it had it would hurt their relationship with the Cubs and limit access. My friend more or less quit in protest and took a job outside of journalism. After that I paid a lot of attention to some of the prospects that came up and how confused they look. Also things like Dusty Baker's ridiculous statement that walks "clog the base paths" made a perverse kind of sense. I don't know if we'll ever know if Hendry's issue with minor league players was drafting or development or a combination of the two but one thing for sure there was no "Cubs Way".

Ownership. It started and ended there. Follow the draft money. Follow the wreck of the franchise and the money not spent. Follow that hendry had half the staff theo has. Think as a gm you get stepped over on the Soriano deal. Hendry didn't make the deal. Then, be told win now or your gone because we are trying to sell the team. Hendry was far from perfect but he was in a lot shittier spot then Theo. Theo has been giving free reigns. Hendry was hand cuffed by horrendous ownership that's goal at the end of the day was to make the most money it could for a sale


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