Cubs president Theo Epstein will probably address the local media today to recap his first season as Cubs boss.
Epstein was the highly prized and highly compensated hire by owner Tom Ricketts, who thought he was buying "instant success."
The bottom line is the genius came into the job, he had an entire off season to right the ship,
but instead his club was worse - - - 11% worse than 2011. 101 losses is the third worst in franchise history. And the fact that the Cubs struggled in their last season to the 107 loss Houston Astros, the only team ever to go two consecutive seasons with 100 losses, is the black cloud hanging over Wrigley for the next six months.
Compare that to the lowly Oakland A's, who in the off season traded away their two best starting
pitchers and closer, had two more starters go down with injuries, but managed to cut a 13 game
deficit to win the AL West from the Rangers. GM Billy Beane took a 74 win team in 2011, and transformed them over the off season into a 94 win divisional championship.
Now, some will say that Beane has been on the job for years so his turnaround may have been laid several seasons ago. But not really. Beane has been under huge fiscal constraints in Oakland. He is forced to trade promising young players because of budget restrictions. Oakland has no modern revenue generating machine stadium. Oakland wanted to move to San Jose, but the Giants blocked it. Clearly, Epstein has much more flexibility in salary and in free agency than Beane does in Oakland.
So there can not be any excuses given by Epstein in his state of the Cubs speech. The Cubs are awful. The players played bad. There was little sign of improvement. Most of the moves made by the new front office did not pan out.
Epstein may cite his "good" pick ups in the Rizzo trade, the signing of DeJesus and Maholm and the pick up of middle reliever Camp, for whom the Mariners cut but manager Sveum called the team's MVP. Middle relievers are not team MVPs. Rizzo appears to be the real deal, but so did LaHair in the first half of 2012. DeJesus may have been a salary "bargain," but he would have never started on any other team. Maholm was a professional starter and his trade for a prospect may pan out as a good rent-a-player move. But Sean Marshall was still better than T. Wood and Sappelt in trade value.
But Epstein cannot run away from his "bad" moves: the Colvin and LeMathieu trade for Ian Stewart was a huge disaster; Rodrigo Lopez was journeyman poor; pick ups Teveer Miller and Jeff Bianchi were cut; Kerry Wood forgot how to pitch; Cardenas off waivers from Oakland could not displace Barney at second; De La Cruz was MIA; Bowden did not impress; Valbuena is not the answer at third base; Volstad as a starter was worse than Zambrano as a madman; in season acquisitions Chapman, Berken, and Germano were consistently inconsistently bad; claimer Socolovich was a non factor; Hinshaw was terrible; Mather was a below Mendoza line bench player, and Lenny Castillo was the injured Rule 5 player who took up a roster spot for little to zero return.
