Joe Maddon to the Cubs. UPDATE: He’s gone (p 19)

[stlouie_lipp]

Look at these smug [expletive]. I don't think I could hate the cubs any more than I do at this very moment.

[jim]

The interview with Maddon on the news was just bizarre. Something about entitlement, and old cars, and ... he seems kind of just lost and crazy.

[ghostrunner]

Was he trying to look like Harry Caray or just a complete [expletive] idiot.

Could've at least dressed up a bit. Looks like he walked in off a beach.

[jim]

Look at these smug [expletive]. I don't think I could hate the cubs any more than I do at this very moment.

Nothing says the Chicago Cubs quite like that picture, does it? I thank God everyday I'm not a Cubs fan.

[Hoot45]

At the presser Theo kept waiting for someone to give him the Commissioner's Trophy, but apparently Major League Baseball is going to make the Cubs play some games first. Can anyone confirm?

[Vidor]

I hate him already.

So, I guess you don't have to comb your f*****g hair before you appear at a press conference for the Cubs.

[docellis]

He is disheveled and hippy dippy but I bet if we had got him (before hiring MM) we would have been fine with it.

Edit: Jed and Theo totally look like they hang out with Tucker Max.

[pioneer98]

It's a pretty good gig. A brilliant and almost unbelievable history of failure, so that future failure is almost expected

That's the thing though - I don't think people expect failure. The Cubs are being hyped so much right now that the expectations are sky high. That's one thing (of many) I find annoying about the Cubs - whenever they look pretty good on paper, the expectations go through the roof. The media has a lot to do with this phenomenon. You'd think after all the crushing losses their fans would learn to temper their expectations, but they don't. Maybe this is the 1 time where the expectations are finally justified. We shall see.

A lot of people around here are skeptical. I just talked to a guy this a.m. at my gym (I was wearing a Cards t-shirt as usual) and he was pretty skeptical. He really didn't know much about the prospects, he almost seemed surprised about how genuinely high I was on the Cubs. He reminded me about Pinella and Dusty and Soriano - and I just told I believe this is different. And I believe it, I do think the Cubs are setup pretty good, and would be very surprised if they aren't very competitive for many years coming up soon.

A lot of local fans want to believe, but they are so guarded that if they do fail they almost to some degree expect it or at least let their brains think about it to not get their hopes up too high.

Yeah, obviously I don't like generalizations about fanbases, ours included. I think there are some people like you describe that are in fact not trying to get their hopes up too high. I know a couple of them, too. But the media is presenting it this way: Theo is a genius. Maddon is a genius. The Cubs have so many good prospects they can't fail. And I think a lot of people are buying in to this. Maybe this presentation is totally right and they will become the 1990s Yankees. But not even the 1990s Yankees got this much hype before they accomplished anything. Afterwards, yes.

[TruffleShuffle]

Yeah, obviously I don't like generalizations about fanbases, ours included. I think there are some people like you describe that are in fact not trying to get their hopes up too high. I know a couple of them, too. But the media is presenting it this way: Theo is a genius. Maddon is a genius. The Cubs have so many good prospects they can't fail. And I think a lot of people are buying in to this. Maybe this presentation is totally right and they will become the 1990s Yankees. But not even the 1990s Yankees got this much hype before they accomplished anything. Afterwards, yes.

Well, Epstein and Hoyer are widely regarded as one of the top 5 or so front offices in the game. Maddon is widely regarded as one of the top 5 managers in the game. At midseason, pretty much everyone regarded the Cubs as the best farm system in baseball (and they'll be top 5 this offseason, even with the graduations of Baez, Alcantara and Hendricks). Plus the vast majority of hitting prospects have been ranked in the top 25 - someone on a Royals message board looked through Baseball America's historical rankings and found that (a) hitting prospects are more likely to pan out than pitching prospects, and (b) hitting prospects in the top 10 or 25 are easy the safest bets. Plus prospects performing well in the upper minors are more likely to succeed than prospects in the lower minors. Plus they're finally renovating Wrigley and getting a new TV deal, which combined with the lack of long-term financial commitments to players, means that they project to have a truckload of money to spend. It's not like the hype is coming from nowhere - they have a very good front office, a very good manager, very good prospects and ample financial resources. The only thing that's lacking is major league talent, which is the most important piece obviously, but as I discussed above, the Cubs are more likely than a lot of organizations to have those prospects turn into quality major league players, due to the large number of good position prospects in the high minors.

As for prospects being overhyped, it's hardly a phenomenon unique to the Cubs. I recall one publication hyping the Astros as the 2016 World Series champs when they had the top-ranked farm system in the game. And the Yankees had a lot of hyped prospects in the early to mid '90s, but funnily enough, those largely weren't the guys who became stars. Derek Jeter was the one big-time prospect who turned into a great MLB player; Bernie Williams was also pretty highly-rated. But Brien Taylor, Russ Davis, Jackson Melian, Ruben Rivera, Matt Drews, Gerald Williams, Hensley Muelens? A lot of their supposed stars of the future ended up being busts, while key pieces like Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada turned out better than expected, and they got loads of production from free agent signings. They definitely had highly-rated farm systems in the early to mid 90s, but I also don't think that people assumed in the early 90s (when they were regularly between 6th and 10th in payroll) they would wield their sizable financial advantage like a club for the next 20 years, as we've seen. If people knew that Steinbrenner was going to start putting the highest-paid team in baseball on the field year in and year out, I'm sure that the dynasty talk would have been commonplace.

Also, on the topic of Maddon, when he opted out of his contract there was a lot of chatter here about him being an excellent manager and some people pining for him as a replacement to Matheny. Now in this thread, some are saying that he couldn't even win a title with the Rays (while competing against teams in his division that were outspending the Rays by a factor of 4 or 5), that he's good with the media and good at selling himself, but not much else. I mean, come on.

[haltz]

Sour grapes, sure, but also not everyone here shares the same opinions.