Joe Maddon, Cubs Manager, is Officially Official

In Uncategorized by aisle424

Well, there you have it. Joe Maddon ——> Cubs is officially official. Reports are that it is a 5 year, $25 million deal. I don’t know who reported it first and I really don’t care to sort through a billion near-identical tweets to figure it out, so we’re just going to accept it as fact and move on from there. The Cubs are holding their press conference at 2pm Central Time where Maddon will get his first taste of facing the Chicago media, God help him. I just hope the contract is signed and notarized before that happens so he can’t back out when Ronnie Woo somehow gets in there and then Rick Telander asks him about Steve Bartman or some shit.

So what’s next?

The consensus seems to be that the Cubs are now “ready” to compete. Combined with Theo’s statement that their goal is to win the division in 2015, the expectations bar has been raised about as high as I’ve seen it raised for the Cubs in a year not directly following a playoff appearance. That usually means trouble in Cubs world.

Realistically, the offense is still a work in progress. It sounds great to say that the lineup will have Alcantara, Castro, Rizzo, Soler, Baez, Bryant and MAYBE Russell all in it by the end of the year, but of that group, Rizzo is the closest thing to a known asset as there is. The rest are huge variables. I’m sure SOME of those guys are going to pan out, but this year? The odds that they all start hitting right out of the gate are minuscule. There’s a far higher chance that they all suck this year.

Does that mean they’ll all suck forever? No. But they’re mostly rookies or extremely young 2nd year players and building an offense around that as your core is going to have its ups and downs. So the pitching better be pretty damn fantastic.

Well, they have Jake Arrietta right now. And they have all but assured us they’ll sign a top starter to add to him, so that’s a nice start, but they’re not exactly going to be trotting out a new iteration of Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Avery this year. Even if they never start Edwin Jackson at all this season, the rotation will probably not be elite.

So they still have work to do, but now everyone is expecting a division title or suddenly Theo and Jed are big failures. (And if that isn’t the narrative right now, it will be by June. You can bank on it.)

So while this is one more piece in the puzzle, I’m not rushing out to be a face-painter at the Cubs Convention while waving my It’s Gonna Happen sign quite yet. There are plenty of other people who are willing to do that.

I think Maddon will do a fine job developing young talent. I think he’ll be less apt to get out-managed on a per-game basis than many of the Cubs previous managers. I think he’ll have the smarts to deal with the media and the fans much as Theo and Jed have over the last few years. So it’s good. It’s the next step.

The step after this is a bigger one. Actual winning on the field.

good luck

Other thoughts on the Joe Maddon hiring from around the interwebs:

 

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