After the Cubs found a new way to lose last night in Cincinnati, the pressure was mounting on the Cubs manager, Dale Sveum. He finally realized that the poor talent assembled on his roster is going to RUIN his career. And he is not happy about it.
Paul Sullivan quoted the steamed manager in the Chicago Tribune:
“Yeah, I’d be lying if you
didn’t think about yourself through some of this stuff too,” Sveum said.
“But that’s stuff you don’t have control over. I’ve got control over my
job and the coaching staff to prepare everybody every day in spring
training and this and that, and that’s all I can do.”
Sveum realizes that other teams (potential employers) will look at his Cub win-loss record as a barometer of his managerial abilities. With the losses piling up quickly, and the Cubs players making the same mistakes over and over again, Sveum's personal frustration is coming to light.
Sveum admits that it’s up to him and his coaching staff “to get
(the players) to respond to all of us.”
But Sveum fails to answer WHY his team is not responding to his coaching instructions. The reason is simple: there is no pressure on the players to perform because there are no ramifications for poor play. For the starters, there are no prospects ready to take their jobs from them. And maybe that's why Sveum is angry; he has been boxed into a corner with no exit.
Sveum's tenor began to percolate over the weekend when he was asked whether some of the position players could be sent down to the minor leagues "to send a message." Reporters inferred that they were discussing Rizzo (for his offensive woes) and Castro (for his defensive lapses).
“You guys asked me if those guys couldn’t get
sent down. I said nobody was exempt (from) it. They're not the only ones.”
Sveum added: “That’s all basically what (I’m) talking about. I’m not pointing
fingers at them or anything. I’m just (saying), 'Hey, we’re all
(culpable for) this. I’m (not) exempt (from) being fired, and so is my
coaching staff. We’re all in this together as a team.”
Except, there is a perception that is reality with the 2013 Cubs. Rizzo, Castro, Valbuena, Barney, and the rest are not going to be sent down to the minors (barring injury rehabs) because the Cubs have no ready replacements in Iowa. The only shuffle continues to be pitchers, but that deck of cards is so thin that the Cubs are playing waiver wire roulette just to find arms for the bullpen. The team, as constructed, is flawed. When Sveum tries to motivate by playing the demotion to the minors card, he has no clout to pull off such a move. And the players (and their agents) know it. It is an idle threat.
Instead, Sveum has the only weapon in his arsenal that professions do understand: playing time. Sveum could bench underperforming players to "send a message" to focus more, train better and play harder. Which would be fine on a competitive team. But the idea that Castro will be benched for whom? The Cubs roster has no true back up shortstop. The same goes for Rizzo at first; there is no competent back up on the roster. And the front office is pushing to keep the "young stars" in the line up because, frankly, why else would any fan buy a ticket to see this Cub team play.
The dogma of the Cubs history is that losing teams breed the acceptance of losing. Even if managers do their best to get their players focused on playing "winning baseball," i.e. handling the fundamentals of the game by instinct and making the correct situational decisions, if the locker room has accepted losing as a way of life with no accountability for poor play, the team will have another lost season.
