Chicago Cubs’ owner Tom Ricketts has guaranteed the contract of Vice President of Player Personnel Oneri Fleita for four more years.
It’s not that Fleita isn’t a good baseball man, although I have my concerns. The bigger problem I have with this move is that it further handcuffs the next Cubs’ GM and seems hypocritical of other recent comments made by Ricketts.
‘‘The GM will be responsible for the baseball operations,’’ Ricketts recently told the media, ‘‘The results are his, and he owns them. They have to be able to have the freedom to hire the people they feel will give them results, including the field manager.”
Yet he guarantees the contract of Fleita for four more years? That just doesn’t make sense.
Ricketts continues to display just how clueless he is. Not only in regard to baseball, which is understandable since he doesn’t have a baseball background, but in business as well.
His business model states that the next GM needs to have the freedom to hire who he wants; in fact, Ricketts made it a point to say that he wanted fresh blood from outside the organization. Then he turns around and re-hires this guy to run his farm system for the next four years.
I didn’t have much faith in Ricketts before this move and this latest stunt only makes me question him even further.
If he wants to attract the best candidates, he should allow the new GM to pick his personnel, and the minor league director is one of the top moves a GM needs to make.
This move tells me that Ricketts is hiring an inexperienced GM, or a guy like Josh Byrnes or Ned Colletti, who need jobs badly. What other established GM would want a job where they can’t bring their own guys in with them?
Can you imagine a Brian Cashman or Theo Epstein coming to Chicago and being told who their personnel guy is going to be for the next four years? No, and that’s why it will not happen.
So what’s next, an extension for Manager Mike Quade? Someone needs to stop this owner before he does even more to ruin the future of this once proud ball club.
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