Carlos Marmol was not that upset with the fans booing his appearance during the Cubs home opener. However, James Russell called out the fans. He said that fans should never boo their team players. He said that he lost respect for the fans who boo. He said that Marmol is doing his best, and the fans should accept the effort.
Win or lose, the Cub players get paid. On the other hand, fans investment in their team is a fragile commodity. They pay their hard earned money to see a good product on the field. They boo players who don't perform well, but then they will applaud when they do well (including in the same game). But for Russell to have a chip on his shoulder after seven games shows that this is going to be a long season for everyone.
The Cubs have been stressing to the fans that they must remain "patient." Ricketts and Epstein said this is all "part of the process." However, those statements do not guarantee a competitive team on the field, now or in the future.
Forbes Magazine recently published an article stating that it believed the Cubs were the most profitable team in baseball. However, since it is a private business, there is no public information to verify. In addition, the Ricketts took on a substantial amount of debt in order to close the purchase (which still currently exceeds MLB ownership standards). But Commissioner Selig said he is not worried about the Cubs debt levels.
Patience appears to be a moving target term. Fans must endure the painful process of rebuilding with the speculative hope that there will be a championship on the horizon. Players want the fans to be patient, in the sense of quietly supportive, even when the team makes mistakes or fails to perform.
Epstein and Hoyer have preached that they want players who are patient at the plate. They fall on the Oakland A's/Billy Beane sabermetric of on-base percentage as a key statistic to winning games. Len Kasper was on his off-flagship weekly radio show saying that he heard from a player that the players had decided that they would be "more aggressive early in the count." When confronted with the fact that the front office wants patient hitters, Kasper said that would come in time, after the Cubs "turn over the roster" i.e. have Epstein OBP players in the line up.
The problem is that the Cubs are free swingers and strike out machines. They are not patient at the plate at all. One walk and ten strikeouts in the last game is a bad ratio. Further, Kasper is incorrect on the statement that the new front office has not had time to field their line-up.
The Cubs home opener was filled with "their guys:" DeJesus, Rizzo, Schierholtz, Castillo, Lillibridge, and Valbuena. All these guys were signed and/or promoted by Epstein and Hoyer. It is becoming disingenuous to say that fans need to wait for the younger players to work their way up the ladder from Class A in four years as being the "patient" hitters - - - when the team cannot get veterans on board with the program.
If patience is a virtue, which means behavior of a high moral character, stringing along the fans with concepts such as patient hitters, blueprint for rebuilding the organization, fielding a competitive team, etc is not taking the high ground when the players take offense to the fans demanding accountability.
