Signing Maddux: Wisely or Unwisely?

By: Chicago Sports Review

Several of my friends, all Chicago White Sox fans, have something to smile about this week.My friends have been glum since last summer with the hated cross-town Cubs winning the NL Central Division while the White Sox foundered just short of the playoffs. Their angst was only placated by the Steve Bartman foul ball incident and the Cubs loss to the Florida Marlins in the NLCS. All winter, however, valiant Sox fans have watched as big-name talent left town: Bartolo Colon, Robbie Alomar, Carl Everett … all to be replaced by rookies and no names.

Meanwhile the Cubs have been adding pitching (Greg Maddux, LaTroy Hawkins and Kent Mercker), a Gold Glove caliber first baseman (Derrek Lee), and bench strength (Todd Walker and Todd Hollandsworth) to a team that was eight outs away from the World Series. Usually, Sox fans can reassure themselves with history: the Cubs have not posted back-to-back winning seasons since World War II.

Usually, a winning season means that Cub management and their fans sign the players who got them to the playoffs to huge sums of money, which generally makes them lazy, and the next year, the Cubs suck. But GM Jim Hendry has taken a different approach, opting to keep the players who are good, and try to improve where the team is lacking. So, for the first time in many years, it appears nearly certain that the Cubs will be more successful on the field than the White Sox, and spring training has not even started yet.

But the guys have been smiling for a few a few days now, not because the Cubs signed their former Cy Young Award winning pitcher Greg Maddux, but that they have overpaid for him.

Maddux, who suffered through a horrible first half of the season to post a respectable 16-11 with a 3.96 ERA last season: his 16th straight year with at least 15 wins. At first, the Cubs were willing to do what the Atlanta Braves, Maddux’s employers for the past decade, were unwilling to do: commit to a two-year contract worth $15 million.

Maddux, 37, is certainly not be the pitcher he was in his youth, and early last season, it appeared that Maddux was finished. His ERA was over 6.00, and even if he has one season left in his Hall-of-Fame right arm, there is no guarantee that he has a second year in it.

Enter “The Prince of Darkness.” Scott Boras, Maddux’s agent, began talking to a number of teams to assure that the Cubs weren’t the only suitor. And as a good agent should, he got the Cubs to up the ante, getting the Cubs to agree to a third season that would cost the team another $9 million. Of course, the third year is at the team’s option and is dependent on Maddux pitching a certain number of innings in 2005, but by then, Maddux will be 40-years-old. It appeared that Maddux was nearly finished last season; how will he fare three years older?

Yes, Maddux will bolster one of the strongest rotations in the game consisting of Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Matt Clement and Carlos Zambrano. Maddux’s signing also is a public relations coup; soothing the angst of the Cubs faithful, who never forgave the team for letting him go in the first place. Maddux spent his first seven seasons in Chicago, going 95-75 and winning the first of his four straight Cy Young awards there. But he and Boras feuded with then GM Larry Himes, and Maddux left after the 1992 season; going to Atlanta, where he developed into one of the great pitchers of his era.

Maddux, much like A-Rod, wanted it all: the money and the winning team. Cub fans will enjoy watching Maddux’s quest for the 11 wins necessary to reach the 300-win plateau, and it is possible that the soft-spoken Maddux may become a second pitching coach, lending his experience to the rest of the young staff.

However, if he does falter, and it is apparent that the Cubs overpaid for a finished pitcher who is good for 12 victories or less per year, and have to pay the remaining two years of Maddux’s contract, the North Siders will suddenly find that they have been taken to the cleaners by Greg Maddux and Scott Boras for the second time.

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