Be Careful

Like the saying goes, be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.  For me once upon a time, that meant Joe Maddon managing the White Sox.  Luckily, it didn’t happen.

But, yes, I really wanted it to.  From a good, long distance, Maddon looked like a genius, pulling proverbial rabbits out of a hat at Tropicana Field for the Rays.  Just imagine what he could do at 35^th and Shields, I told myself when Maddon became available after the 2014 season.  Alas, Maddon went north, and we eventually got Rick Renteria, the guy Theo Epstein showed the door to make room for the incoming genius.

The thing is, Maddon  up close bugged me from the start.  You don’t bat the pitcher eighth, unless it’s Gary Peters (Babe Ruth would go a little higher), but Maddon did it all the time.  You don’t take your star third baseman and risk injury by playing him in the outfield, but Maddon regularly that with Kris Bryant.  You don’t play musical chairs with the leadoff spot, but Maddon did it with perverse delight.  And you stop with the themed dress-up parties after a while, only Maddon kept doing them.

What Epstein got right was that Maddon would be the right guy at the right time, only he didn’t know how short a time it would be after a World Series championship in 2016.  Maddon said as much in an ESPN.com interview yesterday, how “when I started there [in Chicago]—’15, ’16, ’17—it was pretty much my methods.  And then all of a sudden, after ’18 going into ’19, they wanted to change everything.”  Hmm.

In other words, the Cubs won big when the front office did things the Maddon way, and everything soured once Epstein called for change.  Here’s what I think—the Epstein-Maddon relationship started to fray the second bench coach Dave Martinez moved on in 2018 to manage the Nationals.  Martinez was with Maddon in Tampa before Chicago.  He brought something to the dugout no one really appreciated until he left.

Maybe I would’ve seen that had the M and M boys landed on the South Side, but they didn’t.  Oh, well, you can’t always get what you want, not that I’m complaining here.