Chicago Cubs: Top 3 Maddonisms we don’t want in a new skipper

Joe Maddon will forever be the guy who led the Chicago Cubs to a title. But there are certain traits he possessed the team can do without moving forward.

I’m going to steal the Chicago Cubs president’s words by starting off saying Joe Maddon is most likely a Hall of Fame manager and maybe the best Chicago Cubs manager of all time. What Maddon has done is amazing and beyond words.

I mean, we’re talking about the man who turned the Lovable Losers into a perennial postseason contender. He took the Cubs from their darkest days early in the rebuild to shocking the baseball world with 97 wins and a run to the NLCS in 2015. Of course, he followed that up with a division title and World Series championship the next year and yet another NLCS appearance in 2017.

In other words, Joe, we love you.  As we move forward and look forward, not backward, we know what traits of Joe Maddon or Maddonisms we probably don’t need in a new Cubs manager. Why not use Maddon’s own expressions to explain what we don’t want in a new skipper.

So with all due respect to Maddon, here are the top three Maddonisms the next top man in the Chicago dugout doesn’t need to have in order to be successful.

Chicago Cubs: Be Present Not Perfect 

Not only will the new manager need to be perfect but so will the players in 2020. This is one Maddonism that a new Cubs skipper can definitely ignore. The front office seems to be looking for, a grinding, yet winning coach that’s as close to ‘perfect’ as possible. The Joe Maddon School of Baseball is out of business and now the staff and players have to earn their money and perform.

Chicago Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein said that players have to have a sense of accountability and there needs to be a culture where players are pushing themselves in his recent season-ending press conference.

That’s a far different tune than the “It’s OK to fail culture”, Maddon fostered with some of the Cubs’ best like shortstop Javier Baez, during his offensive meltdowns in the past. In the future, there will be an expectation of playing at a high level and lifting fellow teammates to perfection. The mentorship Maddon showed his players was part of an era gone by the wayside. The 2020 Chicago Cubs will be about performance now that Epstein is looking for accountability from the players as the contention window winds down.

While Epstein recognizes new players need a little coddling, he’s expecting his new manager to be able to handle this aspect without much thought.

Chicago Cubs: Anxiety lives in the future

This Maddonism reminds me of an old Seinfeld episode where the character George, who’s trying to keep his blood pressure down, learns of a rage-controlling exercise where he is supposed to say the phrase, “serenity now” every time he gets angry.  A high-strung person already, George begins ‘yelling’ the phrase when he gets angry, causing himself even more stress.

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Everyone gets nervous, but professionals use that nervous energy to create plays on the field. So why are we running from anxiety? A new Chicago Cubs manager’s theme could very well be, “Anxiety now!”

Epstein wants the pressure, the fear of losing, the must-win every game attitude to begin on Opening Day, not in late September. Epstein even mentioned how the team doesn’t seem to get serious until September because they seemed to think they can always get it done. For the past two years, they haven’t, though, and too many games slipped away during the season. There needs to be a sense of urgency now to get it done. Anxiety now!

Offensive production is down. Where is the sense of urgency? Epstein wants to see a new manager that sees it “all” as an emergency. Of course, an emergency said manager will fix.

It seems the only real anxiety Maddon felt was during his pitching changes and relief decisions. This is where a new manager has to be smart and not over-think the issue or problem. The former Chicago skipper could never get the timing right for making changes.

He would either move his pitchers too early or too late and Maddon did get it right once in awhile as well to be fair. Epstein’s new skipper needs to feel the anxiety for moving pitching at anytime necessary but understand timing is everything.

Let the anxiety begin and flow daily until the season is over. Anxiety now! Not in the future.