Hendry can't possibly be the GM next season, right?

[Slaky]

I'm not comfortable with everything Chuck is saying here but I am not convinced that he's 100% wrong on this either... Final analysis: Chuck is 75% wrong.

I don't think Chuck is entirely wrong but I think he is living in a fucking fantasy land.

Internet Chuck was never 100% wrong about Soriano either, was he? And that probably just made all the dumb things he chose to say that much more irritating.

He was 100% wrong when he called him an "awful, awful" baseball player.

Yes, that is entirely incorrect. Especially, inexplicably near the end of his tenure.

Soriano's legacy for me will be mostly positive.

[Quality Start Machine]

Besides, what would the Ricketts' "due diligence" had found if it were run differently? You have a team that won two straight division titles, including one year with the best record in the league. That happened under Jim Hendry. If they had a better baseball mind than Jim Hendry doind the DD, they would have made that person GM instead of keeping Hendry around.

Besides, since the Ricketts family had no experience in baseball ownership, they didn't have anyone in the inside. If they had, chances are pretty good that they would have heard what everyone always hears about Hendry, that he's a "good baseball man".

Finally, fuck it. It's all water under the bridge, and Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer run the team now. I'm sure even Chuck would agree that a smart business owner eeventually has a "Lessons Learned" session,  and in this case they went out and hired the two best people available to rebuild not only the franchise, but instill a new organizational philosophy. If you still want to waste time bitching about Jim Hendry (who, let's not forget, did things like trade Bobby Hill for Aramiz Ramirez and Kenny Lofton, Todd Hundley for Eric Karros and Mark Grudzielanek, and Hee Seop Choi for Derrick Lee), then you might as well bring up Brock-for-Broglio while you're at it.

[InternetApex]

Besides, what would the Ricketts' "due diligence" had found if it were run differently? You have a team that won two straight division titles, including one year with the best record in the league. That happened under Jim Hendry. If they had a better baseball mind than Jim Hendry doind the DD, they would have made that person GM instead of keeping Hendry around.

Besides, since the Ricketts family had no experience in baseball ownership, they didn't have anyone in the inside. If they had, chances are pretty good that they would have heard what everyone always hears about Hendry, that he's a "good baseball man".

Finally, fuck it. It's all water under the bridge, and Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer run the team now. I'm sure even Chuck would agree that a smart business owner eeventually has a "Lessons Learned" session,  and in this case they went out and hired the two best people available to rebuild not only the franchise, but instill a new organizational philosophy. If you still want to waste time bitching about Jim Hendry (who, let's not forget, did things like trade Bobby Hill for Aramiz Ramirez and Kenny Lofton, Todd Hundley for Eric Karros and Mark Grudzielanek, and Hee Seop Choi for Derrick Lee), then you might as well bring up Brock-for-Broglio while you're at it.

Smart business men aren't dumbfucks. They don't learn lessons. They teach them. They obviously taught Chuck.

[Eli]

Finally, fuck it. It's all water under the bridge, and Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer run the team now. I'm sure even Chuck would agree that a smart business owner eeventually has a "Lessons Learned" session,  and in this case they went out and hired the two best people available to rebuild not only the franchise, but instill a new organizational philosophy. If you still want to waste time bitching about Jim Hendry (who, let's not forget, did things like trade Bobby Hill for Aramiz Ramirez and Kenny Lofton, Todd Hundley for Eric Karros and Mark Grudzielanek, and Hee Seop Choi for Derrick Lee), then you might as well bring up Brock-for-Broglio while you're at it.

Pretty much this. Also, hopefully we'll all still be thanking Hendry a decade from now for drafting perennial MVP Javier Baez.

[Yeti]

I also doubt Theo would have been available two years sooner. And if the same people who didn't know enough to fire Jim Hendry were making the decision to hire the next VP/GM they might have hired somebody who would need to be launched three years later. And then where would we be.

If you ask me the process worked/is working.

Final analysis: Chuck is 75% wrong.

Pretty much THIS and what Fork said above...

We don't really know who would have been available in 2009, and, in the end, the Cubs got the right guy. I know Chuck has that spreadsheet detailing why it should have been Friedman, but Tom got on the right track in the end.

[Eli]

Pretty much THIS and what Fork said above...

We don't really know who would have been available in 2009, and, in the end, the Cubs got the right guy. I know Chuck has that spreadsheet detailing why it should have been Friedman, but Tom got on the right track in the end.

Friedman AND Epstein, if I recall correctly.

[Tonker]

Besides, what would the Ricketts' "due diligence" had found if it were run differently? You have a team that won two straight division titles, including one year with the best record in the league. That happened under Jim Hendry. If they had a better baseball mind than Jim Hendry doind the DD, they would have made that person GM instead of keeping Hendry around.

Besides, since the Ricketts family had no experience in baseball ownership, they didn't have anyone in the inside. If they had, chances are pretty good that they would have heard what everyone always hears about Hendry, that he's a "good baseball man".

Finally, fuck it. It's all water under the bridge, and Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer run the team now. I'm sure even Chuck would agree that a smart business owner eeventually has a "Lessons Learned" session,  and in this case they went out and hired the two best people available to rebuild not only the franchise, but instill a new organizational philosophy. If you still want to waste time bitching about Jim Hendry (who, let's not forget, did things like trade Bobby Hill for Aramiz Ramirez and Kenny Lofton, Todd Hundley for Eric Karros and Mark Grudzielanek, and Hee Seop Choi for Derrick Lee), then you might as well bring up Brock-for-Broglio while you're at it.

Meh.  Don't get me wrong, those were fantastic trades, but I wouldn't give Hendry too much credit for any of them, really.  For A-Ram and Lee, he was in a position to take on payroll, and had trade partners whose main objective was to ditch money rather than acquire prospects.  I don't think by that stage, anybody really thought Hill, Bruback or Choi were ever going to amount to much.  Getting in Grudz and Karros was just a case of getting Hundley out of the door and taking on someone else's problem to do it: if Hendry now claims he knew how successful those two guys were going to be for the Cubs, he's a fucking liar.

Having said that, if those trades had turned out different, you can bet your bottom fucking dollar that I'd be holding Hendry responsible for them.  So, you know... I'm not sure what my point is.

[R-V]

Besides, what would the Ricketts' "due diligence" had found if it were run differently? You have a team that won two straight division titles, including one year with the best record in the league. That happened under Jim Hendry.

THIS. When you're buying a business that you have no experience with, even the Big Swinginest Dick, My Way or the Highway New Owner probably would not immediately shitcan the guy that just put together two division titles. Now those titles were obviously not leading indicators of long-term success, but I'm not going to call Ricketts an idiot because it took him 18 months longer than a Savvy Owner would've needed to identify the organizational rot under the surface of the shiny division titles.

I can't wait for the Cubs to win a World Series and see Chuck's immediate complaint that it should've happened a year sooner, dammit!

[Eli]

Meh.  Don't get me wrong, those were fantastic trades, but I wouldn't give Hendry too much credit for any of them, really.  For A-Ram and Lee, he was in a position to take on payroll, and had trade partners whose main objective was to ditch money rather than acquire prospects.  I don't think by that stage, anybody really thought Hill, Bruback or Choi were ever going to amount to much.  Getting in Grudz and Karros was just a case of getting Hundley out of the door and taking on someone else's problem to do it: if Hendry now claims he knew how successful those two guys were going to be for the Cubs, he's a fucking liar.

Having said that, if those trades had turned out different, you can bet your bottom fucking dollar that I'd be holding Hendry responsible for them.  So, you know... I'm not sure what my point is.

I think you can dismiss any good move any GM makes, if you try hard enough. You could play the same game with everything Epstein and Hoyer have done. When a move turns out well, just enjoy it.

[Tonker]

Besides, what would the Ricketts' "due diligence" had found if it were run differently? You have a team that won two straight division titles, including one year with the best record in the league. That happened under Jim Hendry.

THIS. When you're buying a business that you have no experience with, even the Big Swinginest Dick, My Way or the Highway New Owner probably would not immediately shitcan the guy that just put together two division titles. Now those titles were obviously not leading indicators of long-term success, but I'm not going to call Ricketts an idiot because it took him 18 months longer than a Savvy Owner would've needed to identify the organizational rot under the surface of the shiny division titles.

I can't wait for the Cubs to win a World Series and see Chuck's immediate complaint that it should've happened a year sooner, dammit!

Internet Chuck won't see the Cubs win a World Series.  He'll have switched off in the middle of August and started cheering for other teams, because he doesn't like Kent Mercker.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

I'm not comfortable with everything Chuck is saying here but I am not convinced that he's 100% wrong on this either... Final analysis: Chuck is 75% wrong.

I don't think Chuck is entirely wrong but I think he is living in a fucking fantasy land.

Internet Chuck was never 100% wrong about Soriano either, was he? And that probably just made all the dumb things he chose to say that much more irritating.

He was 100% wrong when he called him an "awful, awful" baseball player.

Yes, that is entirely incorrect. Especially, inexplicably near the end of his tenure.

Soriano's legacy for me will be mostly positive.

Right. But he wasn't entirely wrong to expect Soriano's contract to be an albatross by the end of its term. I think we all more or less expected that to be the case. It was that he could turn that into "awful, awful" (and so forth) that makes him Chuck.

Just like he'll be hanging this "revealing" and "very troubling" video (in which Joe Ricketts, by way of explaining how much his son loves the Cubs, lovingly jokes about Tom being a bit of a college goof-off who watched a lot of baseball and graduated a few months late) around the Ricketts' necks for the rest of eternity.

[Quality Start Machine]

I think you can dismiss any good move any GM makes, if you try hard enough. You could play the same game with everything Epstein and Hoyer have done. When a move turns out well, just enjoy it.

The failures always leave a more lasting impression. Which is why John Holland is still better known for trading away Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio than he is for trading Larry Jackson for Fergie Jenkins.