Cubs’ weekend dust starts to settle
Things seemed to be settling down Sunday at Wrigley Field, two days after the front-office upheaval that featured news of general manager Jim Hendry’s firing.
Team owner Tom Ricketts, who informed Hendry on July 22 of his fate, has put the short-term task of moving forward into the hands of interim GM Randy Bush. Bush already has been in contact with members of the baseball-operations staff to reassure them as best he could about their futures.
“I met with our staff here in Chicago,” Bush said before Sunday night’s 6-2 loss to the Cardinals. “I did a conference call yesterday with Tom Ricketts with all scouts and player-development people.
“I followed that up today with another message that went out to all of our scouts and player-development people and just tried to assure them that I was going to do everything possible to make this transition smooth and make good decisions in the interim and also to try to smooth out any concerns that they would have about their futures, because I understand that there can be some uncertainty when you have a change in leadership like that.”
The two key people to watch are scouting director Tim Wilken, who ran this year’s much-ballyhooed amateur draft, and farm director Oneri Fleita. Both are staunch Hendry loyalists, and Ricketts is known to like the work of both men, the firing of Hendry notwithstanding.
Ricketts may want to keep both in the organization even as a new GM comes aboard sometime in the coming weeks.
“Tom has spoken about how impressed he is and how happy he is with our scouting department and player development,” Bush said. “He’s happy with Oneri’s leadership and Tim Wilken. I expressed to them that he has those feelings about the job that they’re doing. We could see a path where we go down where a lot of the things that are in place would stay in place.”
Bush is not a candidate for the permanent (such as it is) GM job, as Ricketts said he would look outside the organization. Bush said he’d like to be a GM someday but that he respects Ricketts’ decision. I asked Bush what he’d tell the new guy who comes in.
“I would tell him that I believe that we’ve done a great job recently of acquiring talent, that Mr. Ricketts has made a commitment, both domestically and internationally, to pursue the top talent available and that our player-development people are doing a great job of moving those players along at the right place to get them here where they’ll be here for a long time,” he said.
Ricketts went on ESPN’s telecast Sunday night and repeated much of what he said Friday. He did add that it would be hard for him to imagine Carlos Zambrano pitching for the team again. Zambrano is on the disqualified list for leaving the team after his start in Atlanta on the last road trip.
Field manager Mike Quade, whose fate hangs in the balance, called the last few days “a crazy weekend.”
Just as the Cubs did late last year under Quade, they’ve played well now that they’re well out of the race. However, Quade bristled at the suggestion that once again, his team is playing well because the pressure is off.
“Every time you take the field, there’s pressure, every time you compete,” he said. “If there are other things surrounding what has taken place this year, dealing with that, there’s plenty of reason for me to be happy with the way they’re playing now and try to fight through the rest of this.
“Nobody wishes more than me this would have started better. But at this point there’s not a (darn) thing we can do about it but try and finish well. You play in front of 42,000 people at Wrigley in a St. Louis series, and there’s no pressure? I think not.”
bmiles@dailyherald.com