In Anaheim, cubs owner Tom Ricketts said he fully supports GM Jim Hendry, though he stopped short of guaranteeing Hendry job security.
According to MLB.com’s Carrie Muskat, Ricketts had this to say:
“The fact is right now, Jim is our general manager, I support him, I think he does a great job, and after that we’ll just take it one day at a time,” the chairman said.
“I’m not going to assign blame to anyone or anything,” said Ricketts. “The fact is we came into the season, we had what appeared to be a pretty strong lineup. It hasn’t worked out for whatever reason and it seems like the guys are putting it together now and let’s just keep winning.”
I’ve been writing for awhile now if I ever got the chance to own a major league baseball team, the first thing I would do is to install my own baseball man to lead the franchise.
Look, it’s not as if this ownership jumped up and bit Ricketts in the middle of the night. No, he had plenty of time to think about this and to find a baseball guy whom he trusts to, if not replace the GM, at least evaluate the situation.
Instead, Ricketts kept Crane Kenney on board and allowed Hendry to continue as the highest ranking club executive with any knowledge of baseball.
Hey, I understand the rationale behind not making immediate changes to the front office. But how can you possibly know whether or not Hendry and his crew are doing a good job if you don’t know much about baseball?
And Ricketts has admitted as much. Does he expect Kenney to know? Is he using the won-loss record as proof?
If so, he’s wrong about Kenney and he’s ignoring the record—for it’s awful, especially or a club with as high of a payroll as the Cubs have.
The article goes on to say that the club is looking to shed high salaries (surprise, surprise!) and that Kosuke Fukudome may be the their most tradeable chip.
But I’m wondering how Ricketts will be evaluating Hendry going forward.
You know, I’d like to have confidence in our new owner, but I just don’t understand what he’s using to base his evaluations on, other than his own eyes.
And those are eyes that he readily admits get cloudy when it comes to the finer points of the game we love.
Oh well, I fully expect that Hendry will continue on as GM no matter what happens this season. And no matter, really, since this mess would be difficult to untangle for even the best GM.
At least the Chairman is watching.
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