After an evaluation process that lasted a couple of weeks – really, you could say a couple of years – the Chicago Cubs today decided to part ways with manager Dale Sveum, who had been under contract through 2014, as first reported by Ken Rosenthal and Dave Kaplan. Official word came soon after their reports. The Cubs will eat the cost of Sveum’s final year, and proceed with a new managerial search.
That the move comes just two years after Sveum was hand-picked by the front office after a lengthy, exhaustive search is something of a black eye, and you’d be hard-pressed to make an argument that there wasn’t a mistake in here somewhere.
In any case, we move on to the next shiny, new thing, and the Cubs will hope to get it right this time. The next manager will, like Sveum, inherit a young, turnover-prone roster, which will hopefully soon feature the building blocks for a near-term competitive club. Heck, hopefully the next manager will be one of those blocks, too.
I’ll have more on Sveum’s departure, and on the next steps soon.
(UPDATE: Just taking the reportedly out of it. It’s official. He’s fired.)