With every successful sports franchise, leaders and managers tend to get looked over for promotions with other teams. It is trying to buy past success with a new employer.
Rumors have started to circulate that Cubs executives could be top talent to other organizations. There are strong rumors that the Twins are pursuing
Cubs execs Jason McLeod or Shiraz Rehman for their top baseball
operations job.
McLeod has been a part of Theo Epstein's inner circle from their Boston Red Sox days.
While Jed Hoyer worked with Epstein on Boston player acquisitions, contract
negotiations, player evaluations and sabermetrics, McLeod's expertise is in amateur scouting.
The Twins, being a small market team, need to have a strong scouting and development department in order to compete with big money, free agent spending teams like the Detroit Tigers, Red Sox, or Yankees.
While Epstein's contract expires after the end of the season, it is unclear the status of McLeod's contract term. In any event, it is standard practice for most teams to allow an employee to interview for a promotion with another club.
As discussed previously, the Epstein contract extension situation with the Ricketts is strange. Why both sides have not concluded an extension after last season's success is baffling to industry insiders. It shows that there has to be some rift between the baseball and business sides of the organization.
So Epstein's management team may look to parachute to new positions. This is similar to what happened when Epstein's reign was coming to an end in Boston; many of his staff went elsewhere including to the Padres before rejoining him in Chicago.
So it will be no surprise that the other teams will want to hire Cub baseball executives this off-season.
