Memorial Day is supposed to be a day of celebration throughout Major League Baseball (judging by the bunting and those hideous caps they had the players wear anyway), but Monday at Wrigley Field was nothing short of a carnival of fools. The Cubs looked inept at the field, at the plate, and on the mound, and they were rocked by the lowly Houston Astros 12-6 in front of a sparse crowd for a national holiday.
The game was just one of many recently that have Cubs fans scratching their heads. How could this team, which was supposed to come out of Spring Training with an emphasis on team play and fundamentals, look like the Washington Generals of the National League? How could Mike Quade, who looked so savvy last season in leading the Cubs to a 24-13 finish, make so many seemingly bone-headed decisions that really have cost this team games? How did Jim Hendry allow this bunch to rely on James Russell as a fifth starter when Randy Wells and Andrew Cashner went down?
All of these questions are absolutely legitimate, but there is one common thread that ties them all together, and it can be summed up with this question: is it time for a major change in direction for this ballclub? Is it time that the Hendry era, which has produced three division titles and some very highly touted young prospects, come to an end? Should Quade's job be at risk for some of the bad decisions he has made in his first year at the helm? Should the dreaded "rebuild" word become a reality rather than a possibility?
Since we're looking at an entire hierarchy here, we'll start with Hendry. In all honesty, the man should be given his walking papers. He signed Carlos Zambrano and Milton Bradley to absurd contracts, gave Ryan Dempster $13 million a year, and oh yeah, did we fail to mention that whole Alfonso Soriano deal that is still hampering the Cubs? Time and again he has made decisions much like the United States government: we'll deal with the consequences later. He should have been fired after last season so that a fresh set of eyes could have evaluated who should manage the ballclub, but Tom Ricketts and company kept him around, and unfortunately now, they're stuck with him.
The team should not fire Hendry simply for this reason: a new GM would be a bad thing for the Cubs both at the upcoming MLB Draft, and also at the trade deadline. Imagine a GM trying to wheel and deal pieces at the deadline, but only having been on the job for a month or two. That doesn't sound like a recipe for success, so it would make more sense for the team to play out the rest of the year with Hendry at the helm, and then re-evaluate his status at the end of the campaign. The likely outcome would still be firing him, but at least then the team would be able to put together a legitimate off-season plan and get the new regime off on the right foot.
Moving down the food chain, the decision to fire Quade is not one that the Cubs should consider right now. If you'll recall, they only signed Mike to a 2-year contract when they removed the interim tag from his title after the 2010 season, so they wouldn't have to eat that much money to make him go away after this season. To be completely frank, he just doesn't seem like the type of guy who can handle being at the helm. He brings in pitchers at the wrong times, sticks with them when he shouldn't, and his handling of other areas related to strategy seems to be lacking at best. Granted, it is difficult to make a killer soufflé out of terrible ingredients, but at the very least you should be able to strategize correctly, even if the team fails to execute your orders.
For the final element of the question of the Cubs' future, this team is in desperate need of a rebuild. They have a couple of assets coming off the books that will free up some salary room, with Carlos Pena and Kosuke Fukudome being free agents at season's end. With Aramis Ramirez also potentially being off the books, the team will have a lot of money to spend, but they should certainly give the purse strings to a new guy. Hendry has had a decent run of success in Chicago, but he has left this team with a huge mess to clean up, and he should not get the job of cleaning the mess he helped create.
As for Quade, the players still seem to respect him, so if the team decides to keep him on for the 2012 campaign, that would be acceptable. At any rate, fans will have to hope that he can figure out the ropes of managing a little bit better, and hopefully he'll turn the ship around when it comes to on-field performance.
As the empty seats at Wrigley show, Cubs fans are starting to grow weary of this team. The organization is fielding a group that doesn't seem to have its act together, and when your players are unable (or unwilling) to play fundamentally sound baseball, it is difficult to have any optimism. A regime change is sorely needed on the North Side, and if the Ricketts family wants to start putting more butts in the seats, they are going to have to be willing to make tougher choices this off-season than whether or not to install more signage around the ballpark.
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Source: http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/north-side-state-of-mind/2011/05/with-cubs-recent-struggles-should-regime-change-be-in-the-offing.html
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