MLB Offseason 2014-15: Wait, pitchers and catchers report WHEN?
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Fine and / or loss of draft picks.
Do you think having Maddon increases the odds of Price coming to Chicago?
It's not outside the realm of possibility, but I feel like people keep thinking Price is a free agent, and he isn't until after next year. I also strongly believe that Price is a very good, not great, pitcher (his BB/9 numbers only got really great in '13) and I'm hoping that the Cubs don't aim the money cannon at him when he gets on the wrong side of 30 -- he relies on velocity, not command, and velocity is the first thing to go as a pitcher gets older.
Yeah, I know it's after the 2015 season, and the Cubs have been mentioned as a team he would consider.
I'm wondering how fond of Maddon Price is, and what effect that might have.
The Cubs at least have a strategy in place and are implementing tactics to get better (but I hope they sell high on Baez). I'm not convinced AA is doing anything but farting in the wind.
Especially one that stabbed their old manager in the back.
Players don't care about other managers. I doubt David Price could pick Renteria out of a line-up.
^ Perhaps, but what the Cubs did to Renteria, they could do to anyone - even players.
The mewling of jealous FOs.
Yeah, poor guy will be paid through his contract. What horrors.
When one of the best managers in the game is available for the taking you take him. The end.
This happens to players ALL THE TIME. Are you kidding?
Maddon over Renteria is probably a net positive, I agree, but it's incredibly poor form to tell a guy that his job is secure, then two weeks later turn around and say, "Oh, sorry, we were just kidding." It's fine as a business move, but on a human level, it's incredibly shitty and sends a very unpleasant message about your organization and any expectations of integrity to any future hires.
I really don't think they planned it that way. Even if they had a inkling about Maddon, they would have kept quiet about Renteria's future.
If they take a pass on Maddon, then do so-so with Rick, then everybody's yelling about the missed opportunity re: Maddon.
It's a little more than 'probably.
If that's what had happened I'd agree. But all signs point to that not being what happened at all.
How's that? It happens with players constantly. Imagine your team had a third baseman locked into a 3-year deal and you gave him the (dreaded) vote of confidence at the end of the year.
Then Giancarlo Stanton becomes available and you acquire him. Are you sending "a very unpleasant message about your organization and any expectations of integrity to any future hires."? Please. If anything (as is said above) if you don't make the obvious attempt to improve you're setting yourself up for criticism.
Renteria will get paid as he would've. Had to be done.
I'm not 100 percent convinced of this, given that Renteria had remarkable success in getting Castro to pull his head out of his ass, and Rizzo had a hell of a rebound season. That's in stark contrast to their performance under Sveum, when they both looked completely lost both at the plate and in the field. I'm not arguing that Maddon is a poor manager, but his reputation is built on completely non-quantifiable, disputed voodoo stuff as opposed to him being any sort of a great tactician or anything like that -- as far as in-game management goes, he's strictly middle of the pack. The best thing I've heard in Maddon's favor is that the Rays were ahead of the curve on modern defensive alignments, but I'm not sure how much he had to do with their pitch calling and shifting fetishes, nor how much that’s worth. Put another way, I've seen far too many Rays games with Desmond Jennings leading off to buy the idea that Maddon is some sort of managerial savant.
Beyond that, it's also a tough debate because outside of a few extremes -- and I'm not convinced Maddon is in this class -- the actual quantifiable impact of a manager upon wins and losses is nil.
I don't buy this, to be honest. Nothing about the timeline makes sense and I don't believe this was an organic development. Maddon wasn't terribly underpaid in Tampa Bay and he basically had a job there for life if he wanted it (beyond that he's known as a man of simple tastes), and so I find it incredibly unlikely that he rips up his contract and walks without knowing that he already has a job lined up elsewhere, particularly given when the only vacancy in the league was fucking Minnesota (and they already had Molitor lined up), and they're a dumpster fire.
The argument isn't over whether Renteria will get paid or not -- the fact of the matter is that closed external hiring processes are not supposed to exist in MLB. When a team has a non-internal managerial vacancy, it is supposed to submit a list of interview candidates for pre-approval by the league office. Instead, it appears that a deal with Maddon was already in place before Renteria was even fired. Everything about this process appears to have been a sham, and like I said earlier, Theo is probably the only person in the league who could get away with it (and he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for his ability to handle the media alone).
There seems to be very little doubt Maddon could've had any number of jobs either within Baseball (likely a FO if not managerial) or in the media. Molitor was hardly lined up since they were talking about Renteria for that job shortly after the Cubs situation played out. Do you think somebody like Joe Maddon was worried about whether he'd work in 2015?
You realize that they have confirmed communications with MLB on their intentions with Maddon after MLB told them he was free from his contract, right? "Appears" means nothing.
The only source reporting those "confirmed" communications is the Cubs' own press release. Of course they're going to paint themselves to be in the clear.
Edit: And that you're buying the Cubs' timeline hook, line and sinker just reinforces my point that Theo is a PR genius. I work in marketing and PR, for heaven's sake, and the Cubs' handling of this has been a master class.
And Maddon's agent - the only two parties who'd know what really happened.
I'm just not into the tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory crowd. Occam's Razor and all that. But it's fun to play make-believe I guess.
I tend to actually believe the Cubs on this one. It doesn't make sense to both tell someone their job is secure and actively recruit someone else to breach contract. It makes more sense to me that they tell someone their job is secure and then see a new manager become available and go "ooh, never mind." That's certainly not conclusive, but it just seems to fit human nature better.
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