With the Cubs deep in a transition mode, looking for a new manager as well as a variety of pieces to add to the front office pie, you can expect that clubs around baseball – particularly those sitting out the postseason – are deep in the same mode.
The Red Sox’s vacuum at the top of the organization is the one that gets most of the attention around here because of the past connection to a number of gents at the top of the Cubs organization, and Theo Epstein provided an update on that front yesterday.
In short, as was true a few weeks ago when the Red Sox opened up their top job by firing president Dave Dombrowski, the Red Sox still have not reached out to the Cubs on anyone in their front office – i.e., GM Jed Hoyer and SVP of Player Personnel Jason McLeod. It would seem that, in addition to Epstein himself obviously not being in the mix for the Red Sox gig, no one with the Cubs is involved, despite earlier rumors.
There are good and bad ways to read that, obviously. On the one hand, measures of continuity are a good thing, and guys like Hoyer and McLeod have good baseball minds – the more you can keep, the merrier. On the other hand, as underscored by the very process the Cubs are undergoing right now at all levels of the org, change is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it’s a necessary part of transformation, which does not occur without departures (see, for example, the departure of Joe Maddon, liked and appreciated though he was). And if the Red Sox are not even interested in talking to guys with whom they have a history, you *could* read that as a mild dis.
Ultimately, I tend to be of the mind that it’s a good thing if the Cubs can mostly keep their front office core together right now – they’ve had a ton of brain drain over the past few years – and instead I just hope that they add to it. From Epstein’s overall comments yesterday, it certainly sounds like making significant front office additions is part of the offseason road map.