Chicago Cubs: Deciphering recent noise coming from a new front office

It’s enough to drive you batty, trying to ferret out what baseball executives mean when they talk – and the Chicago Cubs brass is no exception. They don’t want to give anything away or give competitors any advantage, so they resort to double, triple, four-bagger-speak, where one has to read between the lines in order to glean any meaning from words that are intentionally informationless.

It takes a bit of doing. But I’ve watched Carter Hawkins’ initial conference a great many times, and a goodly percentage of baseball press-gang coverage as well, in the commission of my duties  and I’m going to try to turn some of the noise into signal.

The running narrative in Cub-land is ‘intelligent spending’. What does that mean? At face value, this means ‘make good-monetary-decisions-that-won’t-cause-Tom-to-tighten-up-the-purse-strings-like-he-did-to-Theo.’ In other words, don’t be dumb. Marcus Stroman is way too expensive. We’re looking at the Dylan Bundys of the world, even though …

Chicago Cubs:  What does this mean? – ‘Pitching is first priority’

What does that mean? Because it’s not the case. The first priority is to maintain the profit margin. This is what makes Tom Ricketts (and I assume papa Joe) cry foul. It’s the Ferengi in them. The organization does not go into the red ink. They go in for squid inc., thank you very little. The rest is lumpy gravy. But the organization has learned the Jon Lester lesson. It just isn’t time yet.

Chicago Cubs:  What does this mean? – Focusing on areas of ‘major importance’

“His expertise on making players better, whether it’s through player development or high performance, seemed like a really natural fit. And on areas of major importance, certainly we’ll come together and work on those things.”

What does that mean? Hoyer has the second-or-third-to-last word on acquisitions. Hawkins is going to be the player development czar. I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust Hoyer, especially in that arena. However, a development czar is a capital idea, especially given the prospect haul the Cubs’ braintrust dealt the Core™ for, who performed better than expectations during the last third of their respective seasons. Indeed some are still turning heads in the Arizona Fall League.

This is great, for maybe 2024. Brennen Davis is likely a year away still. If there is a season (don’t forget those CBA negotiations that are right around the corner), Hoyer will have to make ‘intelligent spending’ a reality. It doesn’t look like Hawkins will be making those phone calls. He’ll be busy building the scouting department, as much as he can… considering that the Cubs fired a good portion of their scouts a year or so ago.

It looked then like a cost-saving measure, but likely it was a two-way street, with this organizational change in mind. The Cubs have show that they have the ability to plan long-range. They just need to work on making good plans, and on execution.

Let’s hope that Hoyer is as good as his August wheel-and-deal seems to show, and that it wasn’t an accident. Let’s hope Carter Hawkins can apply process, and that it works. Or, speaking of execution, heads will roll.