Funnyball

By: Dayn Perry

In Print - January 2007 | View Print Version (PDF)

It’s been an engaging winter for baseball partisans in Chicago.

The Cubs have been among the most active and free-spending teams this off-season, and the White Sox have pulled off a handful of surprising moves. The statistical and on-field consequences for both teams have been analyzed ad nauseam in other quarters, but what’s eluded media coverage is what these signings and trades mean for the Cubs and White Sox as organizations and as decision-making entities.

After all, such personnel choices have meaning beyond the field of play; they signal commitment (or lack thereof) and effectiveness (or lack thereof) on the part of ownership and the front office. Those, of course, are things over which Cubs and White Sox fans will forever fret.

CUBS

In the Cubs’ case, they’ve spent almost $300 million this winter, which means they’ve been rather easily the most extravagant club of the off-season (the Giants, the second-most spendthrift of the winter, have spent almost $86 million fewer dollars than the Cubs). To Joe North Sider, this seems like a manifest departure from the ways of the past. However, that’s not entirely case.

The Cubs have ranked in the top 10 in payroll in each of the last four seasons, and they’ll again achieve that mark in 2007. That’s the longest run of high payrolls for the team since the 1984-88 period, which began three years after the Tribune Company purchased the club.

So the supposed miserly ways of the Trib aren’t to blame. The Cubs are certainly one of the most profitable franchises in Major League Baseball, and people know this.

So when it comes to plowing those revenues back into the team, there’s always been the whiff of neglect surrounding ownership. Many years, that’s a justifiable belief, but lately it hasn’t been the case.

As many other organizations have learned, there’s spending money and then there’s making good decisions. If we had a Venn diagram of the two phenomena, we’d notice that they don’t always overlap. The Cubs are indeed raiding the coffers a bit more feverishly of late, but to what end? The fear is that they’re becoming the “Orioles Midwest,” a malady in which the appearance of progress, for the team’s caretakers, is almost as important as progress itself. The money is flowing, but that’s never really been the problem.

The Cubs might indeed make strides in 2007, but doing so would be more a testament to the underwhelming nature of the National League Central than evidence of native brilliance on the part of the front office. Should the latest experiment fail — and it probably will — then it’s time for the Trib to drop an organizational “daisy cutter” on Wrigley. They need new blood and fresh visions-lots of both, in fact.

General Manager Jim Hendry is, in charitable terms, an executive of dubious skills. His winter “plans” smack of something drunkenly scrawled on a cocktail napkin, and the farm system has foundered badly on his watch. He needs to go after the 2007 season, and he most assuredly does not need to be replaced with some internal lieutenant who’s likely to ape strategies of the MacPhail-Hendry era.

Ineptitude is a venial sin; expensive ineptitude is a mortal one. The Cubs, particularly in the upcoming season, might make glancing strides in the wins column, but they’ll do so in a wildly inefficient manner (the franchise’s first $100-million payroll is assured).

It may be cold comfort for NorthSiders, but at least such a flop will lead to the necessary changes.

WHITE SOX

South of Roosevelt Avenue, things are much more promising. The White Sox toil in a brutal division, but they also return a team that’s averaged almost 95 wins per season over the last two campaigns.

The Sox still have concerns: to wit, the rotation has been thinned out, they still need to get the thunderously overrated Scott Podsednik out of the lineup, and Juan Uribe’s legal troubles are ongoing. Still and yet, this winter general manager Ken Williams has managed to distinguish himself yet again.

Despite not garnering many column inches, Williams this off-season has managed to improve the relief corps, find depth at the catcher position, add a passel of live arms to the farm system and get cheaper in the rotation without sacrificing quality.

It’s this lattermost accomplishment that’s perhaps most important. Just before Christmas, Williams shipped off right-hander Brandon McCarthy and minor league outfielder David Paisano to the Rangers for a trio of pitching prospects, fronted by hard-throwing lefty John Danks.

At first blush, the deal appeared to be a strength-for-strength swap that accomplished little for either organization. However, there’s more to it than that. Danks and McCarthy project similarly, but they differ in that Danks is two years younger and, unlike McCarthy, has no major league service time.

This, then, is the next step in Williams’ improbable journey from questionable hire/executive punchline (Remember how he leapfrogged Dan Evans to get the job? Remember L’Affaire Sirotka? What about the Barry-Berry trade fiasco with the Dodgers?) to one of the most skilled operators in the game today. Williams has already made demonstrable strides when it comes to identifying weaknesses and taking steps to fill them. Now, with the swapping of McCarthy for Danks, he’s learned to play the service-time game.

It’s one thing to discern which players are doing their jobs, but it’s something else altogether to make these sorts of micro upgrades-they’re the sign of a GM operating at a high level.

Danks has a higher ceiling than McCarthy, should approximate him in the near term and will be cheaper for years to come. Saving money at the margins in such a manner will allow the Sox more latitude in other areas. It’s a forward-looking move by Williams, which is becoming characteristic for him. The modestly retooled Sox might not win the rougher-than-burlap AL Central, but they’ll certainly be in the fray.

On balance, the winter of 2007 has shown Chicago baseball fans that the Cubs are still the Cubs and the White Sox are still the White Sox. Given recent history, would you expect anything else?

Dayn Perry, a Chicago-based writer, is a baseball columnist for FoxSports. He is the author of a new book, which you can buy here.

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