No sure bet Ricketts will overhaul front office
Almost since the start of the season, there has been weekly and sometimes daily speculation about the health of Jim Hendry's tenure, especially from the national media.
And though logic would suggest the GM is in big trouble, logic would have dictated a complete regime change when the new owner arrived.
So what's different now, or will be at the end of the season?
Two years will have passed since Tom Ricketts took over, and all that remains is to see how bad it will get this season, or whether it improves between now and October.
But in order to believe Ricketts is going to make major changes, you must also make several major assumptions.
It starts with believing Ricketts now thinks he made a mistake allowing Crane Kenney to stay on as team president, where Kenney is involved in all decisions, including baseball operations.
He is, after all, the team's president, and team presidents are involved in all team matters.
It would mean assuming Ricketts now thinks he shouldn't have allowed Hendry to spend $12 million on Carlos Pena and Kerry Wood, and that he shouldn't have approved a trade of several high-rated prospects to Tampa for Matt Garza.
That's on Ricketts, who could have prevented any of the above by simply saying, “No,” or making a change in the front office.
It means he thinks hiring Mike Quade was a disaster and after the season is willing to admit that as well, since he let Hendry make the pick and then agreed with the GM that Quade was the perfect man for the job.
In order to fire Hendry, Ricketts would have to come out and admit publicly his mistakes of the last couple years, all of which could have been avoided with a couple of phone calls to some wise baseball folks.
So in order to fire Hendry, Ricketts must also do away with Kenney and Quade, and the assistant general manager, scouting director, farm director and several inside employees and scouts, not to mention the coaching staff.
He must do all that because no general manager worth a spit is going to come in here if he's forced to work for Kenney, and forced to inherit Quade, not to mention Quade's staff, and all of the people scouting and building a farm system that Ricketts says is doing so well.
You could find guys do it, sure. You could bring anyone in off the street to be the next GM. You can find someone truly desperate for work who will agree to any pre-existing conditions.
But a quality baseball guy isn't walking into the middle of this circus without a clean slate and the ability to hire all his own people while reporting directly to Ricketts — or a legit baseball man as team president.
Therefore, a lot of people — not just Hendry — would have to go, and we're talking about a lot of guaranteed contracts.
This is not an insignificant amount of money, and up to this point Ricketts has shown no sign of wanting to munch on a whole bunch of paper.
Naturally, all of that could change.
Perhaps, this gets so bad for the rest of the season and the team becomes such a laughingstock that Ricketts can't envision himself at a news conference announcing that everyone will be back in 2012, and finding justification that will go over well with the fan base.
It's hard to imagine him doing that, knowing that people no longer show up at the park just because they like the color of the ivy.
But it was difficult to imagine Ricketts taking over the team without hiring a baseball guy as team president, and it was hard to imagine him passing on the chance last fall to make major alterations to the landscape.
Yet, he let Hendry give Quade two years, knowing Hendry also had two years remaining on his deal, which was the biggest clue of all that Ricketts intended to keep everything in place through 2012.
In the meantime, maybe the Cubs will start to play better, maybe more fans will show up, maybe Hendry will make some solid July deals, and maybe the farm system is as good as Ricketts believes it is.
Any one of those things would be helpful when it's time for Ricketts to make his case to the fans.
So there may be rampant daily speculation and rumors galore, but at this moment you can be certain that Ricketts still believes in what the Cubs are building, is certain injuries have derailed the season, and that he's got all the right people in place.
He reserves the right to change his mind, and he may yet between now and October.
But if you're betting that there will be wholesale changes at the end of this season, just know as we head into the July 4 recess that it's far from a sure thing.
brozner@dailyherald.com
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