Joe Maddon: The straw that stirs the Chicago Cubs’ drink

New Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon is a different kind of cat, with his thick black-framed glasses, silver hair and intricate vocabulary. It’s been a long journey to the North Side for 60-year-old baseball lifer. The Lafayette alumni had a blue collar upbringing in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, growing up as St. Louis and Arizona Cardinals fan.

Maddon spent 31 years in the Anaheim Angels organization, beginning as a minor league catcher who never made it out of Class-A , later becoming a minor league hitting instructor, scout, and even six seasons as a minor league manager before spending 12 years on the Anaheim Angels major league staff from 1993 to 2005.

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After being beat out by Terry Francona for the Boston Red Sox managerial job in 2004, an organization known to have one of the highest payrolls in baseball, Joe Maddon took the manager gig for another organization known to have one of the lowest payrolls in baseball in 2006. Then known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the Florida-based organization had the 29th-ranked payroll in the bigs when he took over. The Rays played (and still play) in one of the smallest markets in baseball and had never eclipsed 70 wins in a season. That didn’t stop Maddon from leading his team, with the same second-to-last payroll in the majors to an American League East division crown in 2008 over those same Red Sox he interviewed with, only two years after assuming his position.

During his tenure, Maddon won more games than he lost as the skipper of the Rays with a .529 win percentage. So can a manager be responsible for winning more games? It’s hard to quantify, but I assure you a manager can lose games for a team. Trends show that Maddon is not afraid to tinker with a lineup or batting order. He is aggressively smart on the base paths, careful not to give up outs. He also brings a new school of methodology to the Cubs, that’s in-line with the front office.  From 2006 to 2014 (his nine seasons with the Rays) he led the AL in in-game positional shifts. Maddon has the uncanny ability to take all the pieces given to him and generate success.

“Thanks to Geoff Williams for our pregame magic. May it wear off on us” – Joe Maddon

Not only is the new Cubs manager a wizard with players on the field, but is a master in getting players to bond in the clubhouse, going to great lengths to bring his team together. The two-time American League Manager of the Year instituted themed dress-up days when the Rays went on the road, for example having all the players dress up as Woodstock hippies on a West Coast swing, other instances as James Bond, or other themes.

At home, Maddon would arrange pregame entertainment for his players from time-to-time, but always with an underlying message. He once did a pregame media session with a cockatiel on his shoulder, telling reporters it was, “just another little diversion, just to lighten things up.” When the Rays got off to a rough start during the 2013 regular season, the so-called quirky manager took it upon himself to bring penguins into the clubhouse later tweeting, “just wanted our guys to chill.”

The fine wine connoisseur is a unique, true player-friendly manager that combines new era of sabermetrics, usage of bullpens, lineups, and shifts, while still demonstrating that players are more than statistics; that team chemistry, clubhouse culture and leadership still does matter. The Cubs are hoping Maddon is the proverbial straw that stirs the drink. You see, Maddon has spent more than half of his life involved in the game of baseball, and though his methods off and on the field are sometimes unconventional, they are never questioned. Let the Joe Maddon era begin.