Cubs, Epstein interview Mackanin for managerial opening
New Cubs professor, er president, Theo Epstein is looking for certain answers as he and his new faculty put managerial candidates through some rigorous exam-taking.
Pete Mackanin, a South Side Chicago native, made sure to get one thing right Friday as he met with Epstein and Co. at Wrigley Field.
“Obviously, now I'm a big Cubs fan,” said the 60-year-old Mackanin, a graduate of Brother Rice High School. “It would be really exciting to be part of the Cubs going all the way.”
Yes, Cubs it is.
“I grew up on South Side, probably closer to Comiskey Park,” he said. “However, although I was a Sox fan, I was also a Cubs fan, and Theo informed me after that comment, ‘Don't ever mention you were a Sox fan again.' I've got to defer to him.”
That was probably the easiest part of the job and media interviews Mackanin went through Thursday night and Friday. He was the first candidate to interview for the job. Milwaukee Brewers hitting coach Dale Sveum will interview Monday. Texas Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux is expected to follow sometime next week.
Mackanin, the bench coach of the Philadelphia Phillies, also has interviewed with the Boston Red Sox, the team Epstein formerly ran.
Epstein, general manager Jed Hoyer and scouting and player development boss Jason McLeod are putting candidates through tough interviews, giving them game situations and seeing how they respond under pressure.
“I've done this before,” Mackanin said. “It was very comprehensive. They didn't let me up for air. They just kept pounding questions at you, and it's very interesting. It's fun.
“We had dinner last night, and they put me through the grinder last night. I couldn't enjoy my dinner. They covered an awful lot of ground in regards to strategy, different types of philosophy, stuff like that. It's going very well.”
Mackanin has worked alongside Phillies manager Charlie Manuel for the past three seasons. A self-described baseball “lifer,” Mackhanin has gotten only interim-manager jobs in the big leagues, at Pittsburgh in 2005 and at Cincinnati in 2007.
But he has managed in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico in winter-ball stops.
“I think I'm quite patient,” he said. “I've had an ambition to be a major-league manager, and I'm 60, so I think I've waited quite a long time. I've been in the game 43 years and I think it takes a good deal of patience to manage at the major-league level, to do anything in this business — to scout, to coach.”
Given the emphasis Epstein and his crew put on statistical analysis, Mackanin was asked how he would balance that with managing by gut feel.
“I think it's a combination,” he said. “I think any tool you can use to succeed, you better use it — video, statistics. Let's face it. Statistics mean something. It's not just a number. If a guy is a .300 hitter, he's a .300 hitter. If he's a .250 hitter, that's what he is. So it gives you an overall in-general look at what kind of hitter he is.
“Then you can delve deeper into leveraged indexes and ways of looking at how he's been used and what his replacement value is and things like that. On-base percentage, OPS, those things all paint a picture of what a player looks like, and in the end what he might be able to contribute. It'll help you make a decision, and we spent some time talking about that.”