Lou Piniella may be back in 2011 after all

Despite recent belief that this year will be Lou Piniella’s last year as manager of the Chicago Cubs, a report came out from the Tribune yesterday, saying that a return to manager of the Cubs in 2011 appears likely for Lou Piniella.

Controversy arose just over a couple weeks ago when president Crane Kenney said that when the time is right, the Cubs brass will have an “interesting conversation”  in regards to Lou Piniella’s future with the Cubs.  Kenney cited whether Piniella would feel  “well-enough” to comeback and manage the Cubs. And that triggered Piniella to laugh it off by saying ” Last time I checked, I’m not on life support.”

But after Tom Ricketts had a media session with the media on Thursday, we found out that General Manager Jim Hendry will be in charge of determining whether or not Lou returns as manager of the Chicago Cubs in 2011. And if that is indeed the case you can look for Piniella to return in 2011, as Hendry fully supports him as manager of the Cubs.

I am still on the fence about what to do with Lou Piniella. Because, for instance in his first two years as Cubs manager he had two very good teams that should have advanced deep into the post season, and yet in both years they were swept out of the playoffs in the first round. And then last year I was fairly disappointed in the way Piniella managed the team,  because towards the end of the year it became evident to me that he did not want to be managing the Cubs, and was uninterested while doing so. So, I will be looking to see how Lou responds to the criticism he faced last year, and if he can rebound the Cubs back into the playoffs.

Also in the report, it mentioned that Jim Hendry will likely be back next year as General Manager of the Cubs, as Tom Ricketts had this to say…

"“It’s been a great six months to start to get to know these guys better in the front office,” he said. “As I’ve said many times, it’s been the most pleasant surprise that we’ve had, how good the people are on the baseball side and how well the organization appears to be running and developing players and getting toward putting a great team on the field.“We really do want a very high level performance out of everyone in the organization and we want to make them accountable. So (there) is nothing about this year that’s any different than years past in terms of how important it is. But it will be really enlightening for us – we’ll learn a lot about everybody this year. But so far, so good.” CHICAGO TRIBUNE"

However, I personally do not want to see Jim Hendry be brought back as the Cubs General Manager in 2011. Mainly, because  of the way he openly overspends on free agents. This year for example he spent 2 years/$7.5MM on reliever John Grabow, who has shown in the past year an inability to throw strikes. He also has over payed on the contracts of Alfonso Soriano, Carlos Zambrano, and Ryan Dempster.

And that willingness to openly shell out money over the past couple of years, has severely limited what the Cubs can do at the trade deadline and in free agency.