After weeks of speculation, pitching coach Jim Hickey resigned for "personal reasons."
Most people do not buy it. Hickey was a friend and colleague of Joe Maddon from his Tampa days. The Cubs won 95 games. The Cubs made the playoffs.
But the front office is bitter by the Wild Card bounce. Now, for the third straight season, the Cubs will have a new hitting and pitching coach. So much for stability. And Maddon is not getting a contract extension, so he will be a lame duck manager.
What did Hickey mess up in order to be bought out to resign his position? The front office spend money on starters Tyler Chatwood, Yu Darvish, reliever Steve Cishek and closer Brandon Morrow. Only Cishek had a good season (80 relief appearances, 2.18 ERA). Chatwood was an uncontrollable disaster, Darvish was hurt and Morrow's injury history took him out for the second half of the season.
Despite the free agent flubs, the Cubs pitching staff year end NL stats were as follows:
2nd in Wins (95)
2nd in ERA (3.65)
4th in Saves
1st in IP
5th in Hits Allowed
4th in HR Allowed
14th in Walks
12th in Strikeouts
The last two bottom of the league states (BB/K) shows that the pitching staff had control issues, but despite those issues won 95 games and was second in team ERA.
Just as hitting coach Chili Davis was brought in last season to improve contact rate, OBP and opposite field hitting, he was fired apparently because his message did not "mesh" with the younger players. Epstein was highly critical that the Cubs offense collapsed in the second half of the season.
The Cubs hitting ranks were:
4th in Runs Scored
11th in HRs
13th in SB
4th in Walks
7th in Strikeouts
1st in Batting Average
2nd in On-Base Percentage (OBP)
6th in Slugging
6th in Total Bases
In today's stat era, having a hitting coach on a team that ranks first in BA and second in OBP would be praised as being successful. The two under performing categories were HRs and SBs, but stat gurus now discount the stolen base as obsolete in the modern game. Despite being middle of the pack in walks, slugging and total bases, the Cubs still won 95 games.
The team stats show that in one respect the Cubs overachieved to win 95 games. Some writers think 2018 was Maddon's best managerial season as he juggled injuries and player slumps in both hitting and fielding. But Maddon critics still think he is failing to develop the young core into superstar talent.
There is mounting circumstantial evidence that there is a rift between ownership, baseball operations and the team (coaches and players). The idea that the Cubs had to dump salary to exercise the option on Cole Hamels set off "small market" alarm bells that the Cubs were not going to spend over the $206 million luxury tax cap. The team is projected to bump up near that cap amount after arbitration awards to their existing players. In Boston, Epstein buried his bad signings and dead money deals by going out and overpaying for big name free agents. That escape plan is not going to happen for 2019. His roster is trapped by bad contracts and under performing young players. If he is going to re-work the roster, it will have to be through trades but the Cubs minor league system has no great major league ready prospects to pull off a mega-deal.
The tension between Epstein and Maddon is clear. Epstein said that Maddon should have not thrown Morrow three days in a row (which allegedly caused the season ending arm injury). But Morrow's injury did not stop the Cubs from winning 95 games as Pedro Strop came in to spot close (until he got hurt running the bases in a move universally critical of Maddon's managing move). It is clear that the front office is hiring the next coaching staff, not Maddon. They have isolated Maddon from gathering his own coaching staff and loyalty. Whether that is a move to force Maddon's hand to resign we do not know. But Maddon's personality is not the type to walk away from a fight, even within the organization. The Cubs cannot outright fire Maddon because he is the figurehead who brought desperate Cubs fans a multi-generational World Series championship.
The firings of Davis and Hickey were sacrifices to ownership for not fully monetizing the season. Someone had to take the brunt of the blame for not going deep in the playoffs (and thus having a large revenue shortfall). It is highly unlikely that a new hitting coach is going to turn .240 career hitters into .300 hitters or a new pitching coach is going to turn Darvish into Cy Young or Chatwood into a All-Star starter.
How Maddon will react to this back office soap opera will be telling; he can either go through the moments in 2019 or try to re-ignite the loose, highly spirited championship locker room. Some believe that Maddon's goofy events worked well with rookies and young players because it made them not "think" about hitting or batting. But as the years went on, Maddon's carefree stunts lost its message and the players seemed to tighten up. It is not that Maddon has lost players confidence, but he lost his edge as a player-friendly manager. At times, coddled players need some tough love (and much of that is messaged through the manager's assistant coaches). If Hickey and Davis' departures are because the players did not get along with them, then this is the beginning of the end as teams that have the players run the asylum are doomed (like late in Dusty Baker's Cub tenure.) We know Epstein wants to be close to "his guys" in the locker room and conversations with players had impact on the Davis dismissal.
If the front office wants a remote control manager who will run the pre-programmed line up and field calls driven by stat percentages, then Maddon is not that type of employee. He still has enough old school baseball instincts that defy new conventions. Change is coming to the Cubs dugout sooner than we as fans expected before the start of the 2018 season.
