The 2009 Cubs season is nearly over, and it is time to decide who is responsible for the $135 million monstrosity of a season, and what should be done going forward. Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune just wrote an article about how General Manager "Jungle"Jim Hendry deserves to keep his job.This, of course, is ridiculous. Hendry has created a team of aging players with untradeable contracts that can't win a damn playoff game, or in the case of this season can't even get a sniff of the playoffs. There is a laundry list of horrible signings and bad trades. This season, everything he has done was wrong. It started out in the offseason with extending Ryan Dempsters' contract(4 years $52 mil), then he traded Mark DeRosa, the 2008 Cubs MVP, for 3 minor leaguers. Hendry then snorted a mountain of crack and decided he could replace DeRosa by signing Aaron Miles. Then he allows good closer and Cubs hero Kerry Wood to leave town and signed the 2008 leader in blown saves Kevin Gregg. And low and behold, Gregg blows a ton of saves and loses his closer job. In order to prepare for a big free agent signing, Hendry also gave away Jason Marquis for free.
All of that is just a preface to his most egregious mistake, the signing of Kanye Bradley. The worst free agent signing the Cubs have ever made. Throughout the season it has just been a circus act in right field for the Cubs. Bradley has not produced at the plate, been a huge distraction for the team, and blamed everything else possible, including the fans, umpires, Lou, and racism for his own poor performance.
The Bradley circus keeps on playing even after he was suspended for the rest of the season on Sunday. In an interview with Bradley's mom, Charlena Rector, reported in the Sun-Times, there was another accusation of racism. "When racism hit his 3-year-old baby in school, he couldn't take that," Rector said "Parents, teachers and their kids called him the n-word. He didn't even know it was a bad word until his mom told him." It's not difficult to see where Bradley gets his craziness. I don't often call people liars, but that is just not true. Is Miltons' kid enrolled at Jim Crow Preschool? It's amazing, overtly racist 3-year olds and teachers tossing the ol' n-bomb around.
It has given me an excellent idea for a new product. It's called the Blame Game -patent pending- and it will be made by Milton Bradley (the company, get it). Someone will draw a card with a problem or bad situation of some kind. Example: You sign a big contract and then only hit .257 with 12 Hrs and 40 RBI. And then everyone else will come up with something to blame it on. Example: I was distracted because my 3-year-old son was enrolled at a daycare where the n-word was tossed around like Kix cereal. Then you can choose who had the best blame. Fun for the entire family. It is almost as fun as the Jump to Conclusions Mat.
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Bravo my dear friend!!!!
ReplyDeleteI just went on a rant on twitter about this this week. Did it occur to anybody that the cubs biggest off season acquisition was signing a player whose prior season ended due to an injury suffered while arguing with an ump. Not fighting, arguing. I wonder if that time he through the ball into the stands with 2 outs this summer was because of racism?
ReplyDeleteNate,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I found your blog, because it is much more fun to argue with you in writing than in person. While I completely agree that 'Jungle' Jim had a terrible season as general manager, I think you missed the point of the article. The point is that this was Hendry's first bad year. While there are many points in your article I take issue with, lets just stick to how good of a general manager Hendry has been outside of 09.
1. Matt Bruback, Jose Hernandez and Bobby Hill for Aramis Ramirez and Kenny Lofton
2. Hee Seop Choi and Mike Nannini for Derrek Lee
3. Toddy Hundley (whom Hendry did NOT sign) and Chad Hermanasen for Mark Grudzielanek and Erik Karros
4. Signing Ted Lilly
5. Signing Mark DeRosa (who is batting .238 w/ the Cards)
6. Signing Moises Alou
7. Trading for Michael Barret who had his best 3 years of his career here and then trading him away and he has done nothing since
8. Signing Ryan Dempster for $300,000 in 04
9. Signing Reed Johnson just days before opening day 08
10. Sean Gallagher, Matt Murton, Eric Patterson and Josh Donaldson for Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin
11. As we talked about the other day; name one former Cubs prospect that Hendry has let get away that has been better than what the Cubs have on the field this year.
12. The Cubs farm system has greatly improved in producing position players as we have 2 everyday starters that are home grown for the first time since Grace and Girardi. Plus the pitching has continued to produce: Zambrano, Wells, Marmol, Marshall, and Guzman.
And remember since Hendry's 1st full year as GM (2003) we have won the division 3 times (more than we had in the first 37 years of divisional play) and our only postseason playoff series victory since 1908, and assuming we win just 3 of our last 10 games it will the first time of 3 straight winning seasons since 1967-72.
I think Jim has earned a mulligan.
Love, Ted
PS- To anonymous- it was 2 years ago that MB was hurt by his first base coach, not last year.
Yeah, Hendry has done some good things in the past. But he was given a blank check from the Tribune company and told to produce a championship and he just managed to sign a bunch of bad contracts and players like Soriano to an 8 year deal and other things that have hurt the team.
ReplyDeleteHonestly the real answer to whether Hendry will stay or not, depends more upon what the new ownership wants to do going forward.