Morning Marquee: Chicago Cubs fire Rick Renteria, officially land Joe Maddon

The worst kept secret in baseball become official on Friday, as the Chicago Cubs fired Rick Renteria to make way for Joe Maddon. Theo Epstein released a statement, thanking Renteria, and admitting that he deserved to come back for another season, but the allure of Maddon was too much to pass up. According to Epstein, Renteria was offered a “choice of other positions within the organization”, which as expected he declined.

Epstein also pointed out that the very difficult choice came down to being true to Renteria, or to the organization. In the end, the Cubs are trying to build a consistennt winner, and Renteria is simply a casualty of the business of baseball. The team will announce Maddon officially as the Cubs next manager on Monday at the Cubby Bear Lounge at 1 pm.

There will certainly be questions raised by the Tampa Bay Rays about tampering due to the swiftness that a deal was in place. According to the timeline that Epstein laid out, the Cubs did not contact Maddon until he had officially opted out of his deal in Tampa Bay. The MLB has a system in place for investigations like this, the same one that investigated the Bio Genesis scandal. The question will be if the Cubs are found to have tampered, what would the penalty be?

The Milwaukee Brewers exercised their option to bring back Yovani Gallardo in 2015. He will return for his ninth season with the Brewers.

The San Francisco Giants held their World Series Parade yesterday. Constant rain didn’t deter the fans from flocking to the streets to celebrate for the third time in five years. One thing is for sure, clean-up crews in San Francisco many be looking for seasonal help every two years at this rate.

Here are some of the headlines from yesterday:

‘The Chicago Cubs fire Rick Renteria’ – Cubbies Crib

‘Did the Cubs tamper with Joe Maddon?’ – Cubbies Crib

‘San Francisco Giants Parade highlights’ -Around the Foghorn

‘Eric Chavez joins Yankees as special assignment scout’ – Call to the Pen

‘Yovani Gallardo returning as Brewers exercise option’ – Reviewing the Brew