”We’re going to hire people we trust, give them the opportunity to succeed, and hold them accountable.” That’s what Tom Ricketts said at his opening press conference in 2009. We all remember it. Slightly less than all of us believed it at the time. Perhaps we should have put two and two together. The Cubs didn’t have any positions open when the Ricketts family took over, but he started off talking about their hiring philosophy.
Maybe this hiring of baseball’s brain trust was Tom Ricketts’ plan all along, but for the first two years it felt like business as usual. The Cubs sucked. And they weren’t getting better. Tom Ricketts’ words looked like meager lip service. We had no reason to take the sentiments seriously.
We do now.
I don’t want to analyze the Cubs under the Ricketts regime. Not worth it. The shift in direction from where the Cubs were as the season ended and where they are now that they’ve employed the College of GMs is obvious. The Cubs are serious about building a winner. Long-term. In the offseason before 2007, the Cubs made an obvious effort to win, but that was entirely a short-term attempt. They added curb appeal to a franchise for sale.
This is different. They’re going to spend smart. They’re going to spend a lot. To paraphrase Rufus at the end of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, They will get better. Trust me.