NEWSLETTER
Although he said that there would be internal promotions coming this week, new Chicago Cubs President of Business Operations Jed Hoyer suggested that the search for a new General Manager – filling his old role – could take a little longer.
Hoyer did not explicitly rule out the possibility that the new GM could come from within, but he did say he would be conducting a search process, spoke highly of bringing in outside perspectives, and said that his current expectation is that the new GM would come from outside the Cubs organization. The timing is an open question, thanks both to the pandemic making onboarding a little trickier than usual, and also wanting to be patient to find the right person.
And if Hoyer is going outside the Cubs to find his right-hand-man or woman, it makes sense that it would take a little time.
“I think that that’s part of the beauty of going outside the organization,” Hoyer said at the Monday presser. “I kind of encourage that and I think, for me, the most important thing I’m going to be trying to find is a sense of trust. That’s probably part of the relationship with Theo that I value on top of everything else, is that these are high-pressure jobs and you make a lot of tough decisions, and things are going to go wrong. And I think you have to know that that person is with you 100 percent and that there’s no dividing the two of you.
“You guys have no idea which decisions I was in favor of or Theo was in favor of. And I think we made that a really concerted effort over the last nine years – that we were in this together and we would go forward together. And we wouldn’t talk about who was in favor of what or whose idea a trade was. To me, that’s critically important in these roles. I want all of the input I can possibly get, and I want differing opinions, but ultimately, when we go forward, we have to go forward as one.”
It’s possible, then, that the new hire will be someone with whom Hoyer has some familiarity from his earlier Cubs days (Jared Porter?), earlier Padres days (Josh Byrnes), or earlier Red Sox days (Amiel Sawdaye), or it’s possible he’ll cultivate that relationship anew with someone he only knows a bit professionally.
Whatever the case, given the importance of the role, and the importance of getting new voices into the mix with the Cubs, I’m good with Hoyer taking his time. Ideally, you’d get the person in place sooner rather than later so that they can help with this critical offseason, but it’s possible that Hoyer and others in the front office will just have to manage the early part of this offseason, and then try to make the front office move later toward January/February/March.
Jed Hoyer discusses what he’s looking for in the next @Cubs GM. pic.twitter.com/cg8xDJsiYs
— Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) November 24, 2020
