Chicago Cubs: Joe Maddon says he knew he didn’t want to come back

Former Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon told ESPN that he knew he didn’t want to return, even in the midst of the 2019 season, for a variety of reasons

As camps in Florida and Arizona get underway, a new season dawns – and with it, familiar faces in new places. Cole Hamels now dons an Atlanta Braves cap, Pedro Strop calls Cincinnati home as a member of a reloaded Reds ball club and Joe Maddon stands at the helm of the Los Angeles Angels.

Maddon is coming off a tremendously successful five-year stint as manager of the Chicago Cubs, during which the team reached three consecutive NLCS, won a World Series, captured a pair of division crowns and completely rewrote the expectations on the North Side.

Now, he joins an Angels squad that has utterly failed to capitalize on having the best player in the game in Mike Trout and hasn’t even sniffed the postseason in years. He’s hoping he can breathe life into the club in the same way he pushed the unproven Cubs to new heights in 2015, turning heads across the baseball world in the process.

The writing was on the wall, even at the conclusion of the 2018 season – which ended in the heartbreaking extra-inning loss to Colorado in the Wild Card game – that Maddon’s days were numbered. You knew it, I knew it – and both Theo Epstein and Maddon knew it, as well.

Chicago Cubs: One door closes, as another one opens

At the end of the day, there’s no disputing what Maddon and Epstein accomplished together over the last half-decade. There was a time in the not-so-distant past where PECOTA projections suggesting a Wild Card berth for the Cubs would be celebrated. Not anymore.

“There was just, you can say, philosophical differences,” Maddon said of Epstein. “But he and I are still good friends. And I like the man a lot. It was just time for him to get someone else and time for me to work somewhere else. That’s all. A five-year shelf life in Chicago is almost equivalent to five to 10 somewhere else. At the end of the day, man, there’s nothing to lament there. That was the most successful five years that the Cubs have ever had.”

Epstein revamped a ton of the organization’s internal structures this offseason – and replaced Maddon with a former player in David Ross who spent the last few years working under Epstein. Ross is his own person, sure, but you have to think Epstein will pull a lot of strings in 2020.

Meanwhile, Maddon has his eyes set on one more journey – one that he hopes ends with him hoisting another Commissioner’s Trophy in November at some point in the next three years, bringing the Angels another title before he climbs up into Cousin Eddie and rides off into the sunset.