Rozner: If Epstein wanted Maddon out, he'd already be gone

With the winter meetings about to break out in full force, get ready for some sizzling Joe Maddon takes from Las Vegas.

Most will focus around the way Theo Epstein is trying force Maddon out of a job as he enters the final year of his Cubs contract.

Epstein is doing this, goes the theory, by removing the pitching and hitting coaches that Maddon installed only a year ago when the manager was feeling his oats.

But the reality is Epstein is not trying to get Maddon to quit. The 64-year-old Maddon isn't walking away from $6 million and those dollars are not available anywhere else.

Even if there were a job for him somewhere, which there isn't, the man is not foolish enough to leave that money in Chicago.

Assuming he's gone after next year, which is likely if the Cubs don't win the World Series, and assuming a team would hire him at a time when most clubs are going very young and very cheap, he's never going to see another contract like the one Epstein gave him four years ago.

If Maddon wins it all again in 2019, Epstein will be more than happy to give him a couple more years at big money.

In the meantime, Epstein isn't trying to coax his manager to abandon his position. Yes, the Cubs president is unhappy with much of what has occurred the last two years and he's merely doing what he believes is right in hopes of visiting another World Series.

Epstein wants to win, period, and he'd run over his own mother to do it. Be happy — if you're a Cub fan — that the man in charge of your team is a cutthroat.

But if he wanted Maddon out, he would have simply fired him, even while knowing it would have been a hard sell after Maddon averaged 97 victories the last four years, notwithstanding the managerial warts.

But those are not new. They have always been there. And Epstein knew of them when he dumped Rick Renteria so unceremoniously and brought in Maddon to finish the championship job.

The other narrative this week will be that there is trouble in Camelot, as if it had previously been nothing but holding hands and skipping rocks.

Rest assured it was never that way — because it is never that way.

There are huge egos and big money involved here and there is always disagreement when the ultimate goal is winning. There are dozens of people involved, not to mention more than two dozen players, and not everyone views every situation and every game the same way.

That's not new. That's not just the Cubs. And that's not just this era of professional baseball.

Yes, there's pressure on Maddon, but to hear Epstein say it, he feels it himself and the players ought to be feeling it, too.

“I think we're really talented,” Epstein said. “It's time to produce or else there's a chance for significant change for the group.

“That's really where our focus is. It's a pivotal year.”

He called it a “reckoning,” which sounds overly dramatic for a club that in the last four years has been to three NLCS and won a World Series.

“It sounds funny after 95 wins, but it feels like we underperformed,” Epstein said. “I think you're going to see a highly-motivated group of players.”

The sky is not falling, but Epstein has high standards and one can imagine that he didn't like being embarrassed by Milwaukee.

Nevertheless, he expects more and if he doesn't get it, there will be significant changes to a core of players that won a World Series only two years ago.

For a team with suddenly elevated expectations, historically speaking, that is precisely the way it ought to be.