Big Mike: The Cubs’ Off-season May Start Soon

So now the Mariners come into it, AJ. SI.com is reporting that Seattle and the Cubs are in serious talks about swapping two of the ugliest contracts of recent years, with Milton Bradley heading to the Pacific Northwest and Carlos Silva bound for Wrigley.

Hungry Jim Hendry might even save his job if Silva comes here and does anything. I mean it — the 30-year-old righthander, who has never been anything more than a barely adequate major league starter, could post a 6-8 record with a sub-5 ERA and Hungry Jim would be hailed as a genius. Which would be the ultimate irony because it was Hendry’s rashest decision ever — to bid against himself and give Gameboard a three-year, $30M deal — that got us into this mess in the first place.

I have to think that new Cubs’ boss Tom Ricketts is waiting to see how Hungry Jim extricates himself from this mess before making any decision on his future. If the Cubs, for instance, have to eat the final year of MB’s contract ($12M), then Ricketts must fire Hendry. In trading for Silva, who’s owed $24M over the next two years as opposed to MB’s $21M, the Cubs won’t have to send any cash to the M’s. The deal alone will be seen as a coup, addition by subtraction. As long as Silva doesn’t bludgeon Lou Piniella to death or isn’t caught fondling 12-year-olds, the Cubs will emerge winners in the deal.

Best of all, should the deal go down anythime soon, Hungry Jim and the Cubs can actually commence working on the 2010 team. Fingers crossed.

Big Mike: Acting Like A Business

AJ, the Cubs yesterday announced that Ryne Sandberg will be managing the Iowa Cubs next year. Being given the reins to the organization’s Triple A farm club has fans here thinking Ryno will replace Sweet Lou when the latter retires after the 2010 season.

Boy, I’m hot and cold about this one. Ryno was the most fundamentally sound player I’ve ever seen with the Cubs. His positioning, technique and approach were all perfect. He even knew how to pace himself throughout the season. For instance, White Sox fans, who have a compulsive need to denigrate anything having to do with the North Side, raised a hue and a cry when Ryno was elected to the Hall of Fame. They said it was a crime that a player who never dove for the ball should be enshrined. My response always was that he didn’t need to dive inasmuch as he was always in proper position considering the pitch, the count, runners on base, and the tendencies of the batter. Equally as important, though, was his knowledge that diving for grounders, while occasionally resulting in a spectacular play, wears infielders down, week after week, month after month. He wanted to be as physically sound as he could be in September.

Sandberg, though, was uncomfortably quiet and shy. He never was viewed as either a clubhouse leader or a teacher of the game. In fact, he was best known for delivering hot-foots to unsuspected clubhouse visitors. His unwillingness to talk made me think on a number of occasions that he just might be an idiot-savant — brilliant at playing baseball, not too bright at anything else.

Nevertheless, a few years ago Sandberg told the organization he wanted to become a manager. The Cubs kept him dangling for a while and then finally gave him the job with the Peoria Chiefs, their Single A club. They were saying, in other words, Fine, you can be a manager, but you’ll have to ride buses through the Midwest first. They may have even hoped such a prospect would make him change his mind. He didn’t. And he’d been so popular that fans were clamoring even back then that he be named manager of the parent club, even though he had zero experience at running a team.

The Chiefs did fairly well in his first year at the helm. Sandberg himself revealed a heretofore unseen side of himself, being tossed out of several games for getting in umpires’ faces. He also took strong positions with players who played fast and loose with the rules.

Sandberg hoped to be promoted but the Cubs kept him at Peoria the next season. He may have been bitterly disappointed but he hid it well and did his job. Then, last season, he was given the Tennessee Smokies, the Double A farm club. And now, he goes to Des Moines, one stop short of the bigs.

I like this progression. It makes me think that maybe, just maybe, the Cubs are starting to be serious about organizational structure. It’s as if there’s logic in this process. Logic, I needn’t remind you, has been in short supply around Wrigley Field since at least the Great Depression.

Right now, though, the fan blogs are howling for Sandberg to be named manager-in-waiting to replace Lou Piniella. I’ve been sure that Alan Trammel is the heir-apparent. He’s had his trial managerial stint — with the almost unprecedentedly woeful Tigers — and therefore has gotten all the dopey ideas out of his system. The best example I can think of is Bill Belicheck, who was thought to be a crashing failure as an NFL head coach after leaving the Browns in 1995. Of course, now he’s mentioned alongside Einstein, Newton and god.

I’m not saying Trammel will be the next Belicheck, only that — as in a starter marriage — people have to be disabused of some silly notions before they can be successful.

Anyway, my hope is that Trammel takes the seat from Sweet Lou and Ryno is installed as bench coach for the 2011 season. Then we can see if he’s smart enough and a leader enough to run a major league clubhouse on his own.

Until then, I like what the Cubs are doing. And I can’t fucking believe I just typed those words.

Big Mike: A Crazy Idea

Oh AJ, Wrigleyville is wringing its collective hands right now. Fans, reporters, wags, wits and even teething babies are wailing because Milton Bradley hasn’t been traded to the Omsk Oblasts yet.

When he was suspended for the rest of the season in mid-September, it was automatically assumed Bradley’d be exiled forthwith. He’s one of the two most hated Cubs in my memory, the other being the non-hitting, nightlife loving, bird-flipping Todd Hundley. To hear some people describe the situation, you’d think the Cubs will be a shoo-in for the World Series if only they give Gameboard the pink slip.

True. There are more than a few who this moment are calling for the Cubs to forget about trying to trade him — never mind about trying to get a face-saving return in talent for him — and simply fire the fucker. That $21M Tom Ricketts and his sibs owe him? Heck, it ain’t nuthin’ but somebody else’s money.

Monday on Bleed Cubbie Blue, a poster opined that the Cubs ought to keep Bradley, inspiring some 450 comments as of this typing. Most of them were divided over whether they wanted to string up Bradley or the poster. Hungry Jim Hendry also came in for a bit of a tongue-lashing, as if he were intentionally trying to drive Cub-fandom to the precipice by not giving his worst free agent signing ever a free ticket for a doomed Space Shuttle ride.

Like all reactionaries, these panicky Cubs fans are blaming everything on one whipping boy. Lucky Bradley isn’t Mexican or Lou Dobbs would have jumped on him with both feet as well.

Milton may be the first player in history to unite the stat geeks and the “character” lovers. No matter that Bradley ranked second among Cubs regulars last year in On Base Percentage, the holiest of holies among sabermetricians, none but a lunatic or a masochist is calling for Lou Piniella to pencil him into the lineup next spring.

This time — and this one time alone — you and I are going to agree that stats be damned. I don’t care if Milton Bradley gets on base at a 50 percent clip next year (something only five players have done in a season since 1901), he’d better be doing it for anybody but the Cubs.

Oh, come to think of it, I’d take him if he reached base half the time. That kind of production would endear him to me even if he’d voted for McCain/Palin in 2008. Bradley’s not gonna post a .500 OBP, though. He may be a professional hitter, but he’s no Barry Bonds.

The upper limit of his OBP probably would be around .390 or even .400. Nice numbers. Beautiful numbers. Not worth the pain in the ass Bradley inevitably will be.

All that said, at risk of branding myself a masochist or a lunatic, there is one circumstance under which I’d keep Bradley.

It’s my considered non-professional opinion that the man is mentally ill. AJ, believe me, watching him interact with umpires, his manager, his teammates, fans and the press over the length of a year has convinced me that Milton Bradley is certifiably troubled. People want to dismiss him as an asshole or a bad man. These are easy ways out.

One night last season, while the Cubs were at bat during a road game, the TV  camera focused on Bradley sitting on the bench. He wasn’t due up that inning and the game, if I recall correctly, wasn’t all that important or riveting. You might expect a ballplayer with ten seasons’ experience in the big leagues to know that that would be the time to relax, mentally and physically, to conserve his energy for the coming pennant race (which the Cubs, improbably, still thought there’d be).

Yet Bradley sat on those wooden slats as if he expected a Johnny Wadd-model plastic dong to arise out of them and ruin his whole evening as well as the muscle tone of his anal sphincter. No lie. The man was a rubber band pulled way too taut. It looked, even on the TV screen, as if every muscle in his body was flexed. His eyes darted madly, not focusing on anything, not seeing the field or the human beings sitting near him. His look was that of the speed freak or, more likely, the madman.

On those rare occasions when he was videotaped answering reporters’ questions in front of his locker, those eyes darted around just as wildly, never focusing on a specific questioner, apparently only on alert for the man with the knife whom he was sure was going to plant it in his back.

Maybe Milton Bradley is too mad to play the game of baseball or even to hold any kind of a job. But pro sports is notoriously tolerant of personalities who’d be fired from any other kind of a job. Dick Allen wouldn’t have lasted a week in an office. Jimmy Piersall would have been homeless. Ray Lewis would be serving a ten-to-life rap — instead, he’s an All-Pro. Maybe Milton Bradley’s demons exceed those of a chain-smoking degenerate gambler with a death wish, a victim of a nervous breakdown or a man who opted to celebrate his appearance in a Super Bowl by participating in a murder.

He may be mad as a hatter (although his sins haven’t turned me against baseball the way Ray Lewis’s have football). Bradley hasn’t got enough control of his emotions to avoid injuring his knee severely just trying to get close to an umpire so he could argue with him. He’s destructively impulsive enough to be thrown out after his first at bat as a Cub in Wrigley Field. He’s burned more bridges than any ballplayer I can think of, including Piersall and Billy Martin.

But what if his demons can be controlled by drugs? What if Hungry Jim Hendry decides to convince Bradley to see a shrink as opposed to trying to convince another team to take the problem off his hands.

What if Bradley has social anxiety disorder, like Rickey Williams? Paxil helped Williams. Would it help Bradley? How do we know Bradley isn’t battling panic disorder, like Jim Eisenreich did? What if he’s bipolar? Would Zoloft, Prozac Weekly, or Wellbutrin help? Or even some pharmaceutical cocktail?

Maybe the guy needs help as opposed to a trade. What a story it’d be if Bradley, under a regimen of antidepressants and psychotherapy, got on base 40 percent of the time next year, helping the Cubs make the playoffs. Nobody would call him an asshole or a bad man then.

Big Mike: Ricketts Needs A Strong Stomach

My day of days has arrived! The sale of the Cubs from the Tribune Company to the Ricketts clan is official now.

TribCo purchased the team in August 1981 for $11M. They sell today for $845M. I’m sure the company’s happy with it’s 27-year reign. Its return is nearly 78 times greater than its initial investment! The team set attendance records nine times. Tribune Tower suits, Cubs front office honchos, the players, coaches, ushers, security people, washroom attendants, vendors, and even Chicago cops out directing traffic after games all raked in piles from the money tree.

The results on the field? Eleven Cubs teams finished above .500. One made the playoffs as a wild card entry. Five were division champs. One team won a playoff series. No team reached the World Series.

Big deal.

The Trib’s first act as proprietor was wise; it turned the keys over to Dallas Green. The irascible Texan cracked the whip, sending a letter to all players in the organization to get the hell in shape before spring training. He cleared the clubhouse of fat and happy paycheck-cashers and actively sought players who’d trip their own grandmothers as they rounded third. He modernized and professionalized all facilities and departments. He realized Wrigley Field needed lights for the team to compete financially so he threatened to move if the city didn’t give him permission to play night games. In his third year at the helm, he sensed the Cubs had a shot at the division title so he traded a couple of promising young studs and a beloved oldster for a couple of pitchers who made it happen. His farm system a few years later began producing the likes of Greg Maddux, Rafael Palmiero and Mark Grace. He was the man who’d lead the Lovable Losers to the Promised Land.

Of course, Dallas Green was forced out after six years on the job. Since Green’s ouster in October, 1987, very little TribCo has done in the name of the Cubs has made any goddamned sense.

Good riddance.

Now we have an owner who became an adult in Wrigley Field. Tom Ricketts fell in love with the Cubs as an 18-year-old in the bleachers in 1984. He met his wife there as well. His brother lived in an apartment across the street from the ballpark. It’s the next best thing to me owning the Cubs.

Of course, Tom Ricketts is now a few hundred mill in debt. But his family runs TD Ameritrade and he founded Incapital LLC. He’s been in high-end investment banking and stock trading all his life. He’ll find a way to dig up lunch money. It’s just that he won’t be dumping bushels-full of cash at every free agent who hits the market.

That’s okay, too. Nobody ever built a championship team solely by signing free agents  — not even the New York Yankees.

The advantage Ricketts will have over previous team owners is he’ll have an emotional stake in the fortunes of the team. I’m hoping (and praying to the god I don’t believe in) that he won’t be satisfied merely by a healthy quarterly report from the team’s accountants. Oh sure, he’s a businessman. He wants the firm to make dough. But here’s hoping he has the good sense to shed a tear or two while he’s counting receipts after a year in which the Cubs fail to make the playoffs.

That said, here’s my unsolicited advice for the new Cubs owner:

Call Alan Trammel in and tell him he’s the manager after Sweet Lou retires next fall. Forget good old Ryne Sandberg. Dreamy-eyed sentiment has no place in this decision. I never thought Ryno was an intellectual titan. Nice guy, I’m sure. Loves baseball. Loves the Cubs. Loyal as the day is long. So what? Those qualities describe me as well. I doubt Tom Ricketts would consider me for the job.

Rid the team of Milton Bradley. Not an easy task, sure, but it has to be done. Signing Gameboard was the dumbest-ass thing Jim Hendry ever did. If Hendry can’t find an equitable trading partner for him, he has to work out a financial settlement with Bradley that would grant him immediate free agency.

Speaking of Hungry Jim, I’d call him into the office and tell him I’m bringing in a Vice-President of Baseball Operations with whom he’ll have to work hand in hand. Hendry may not care to share his responsibilities. Fine, I’d say, let’s work out out nice severance package. Thanks for everything.

Hire a smart, creative, risk-taking, envelope-pushing GM. Someone like Kevin Towers, Billy Beane or Kim Ng. It’d be fascinating to see what any of them would do with a $125M+ player budget.

See what the trade market is for Carlos Zambrano. Perhaps the strongest personality in the clubhouse, Big Z is another in the Cubs’ long line of dumb ballplayers. He can’t control his emotions and he tries to do more than he’s capable of. He’s the anti-Greg Maddux. If the Mets, say, want to talk about sending Jose Reyes or Carlos Beltran here, I’d have to listen to them very carefully.

See what the trade market is for Derrek Lee. I love him. He’s a terrific hitter, a fine fielder and an upstanding citizen. He’s also just about ready to become a very old man. Among the teams that hope (rationally and otherwise) to compete for division crowns next year, the Red Sox, Rangers, Mariners, Braves and Mets all could find a comfortable spot for Lee. Might the Bosox, for instance, wish to move Kevin Youkilis back to third base and ship minor league monster Lars Anderson our way for him?

Find a second baseman, shortstop and centerfielder. You don’t win without superior talent up the middle. As I’ve yelled before, the Yanks became a powerhouse only when they started running the likes of Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada out there. You won’t win anything with Ryan Theriot, Mike Fontenot and a platoon of Reed Johnson and Sam Fuld, especially if Geo Soto continues to suffer from the terminal munchies.

See? That’s all you have to do to reverse a hundred years of bad luck, bad decision-making and bad baseball. Ha! I hope Tom Ricketts has half as much emotional strength as ready cash.

Big Mike: My Heart Bleeds Only For Me

I agree 10,000 percent with your last point. And I wonder if I hadn’t made myself clear in my Nomar post. Hendry was jobbed on that trade. Not necessarily because of anything he gave up (primarily Francis Beltran — ugh! — and Brendan Harris — meh) but because he thought he was getting Nomar Fucking Garciaparra, the great shortstop.

What he really got, as I implied, was nomar garciaparra the fairly decent hitter and liability in the field.

My feelings on Hungry Jim have changed through the years. That’s probably because he’s the most Jeckyll and Hyde GM I’ve ever seen. Within his first two years on the job, he flushed Todd Hundley off the roster and swindled the Pirates and Marlins out of corner infielders who each can be reasonably argued as among the greatest ever in Cubs history at his position. Hendry exiled the drunken, bitter, impotent Son-of-the-Sainted-Randy to LA for Eric Karros and Mark Grudzielanek, who played key roles on the 2003 division champs. That summer, he shipped a minor league catcher, a grossly overhyped Triple A second baseman and an eminently forgettable major league infielder to Pitt for Aramis Ramirez, whom the Bucs had soured on for reasons known only to a team that has spent the last 17 years under .500. A few months later, he sent Hee Seop Choi to the Fish for Derrek Lee.

So for a brief shining moment, I hailed Hungry Jim as a cross between Branch Rickey and Isaac Newton.

But then…, but then, but then. Hungry Jim, the big boss man of the Cubs allowed Johnnie B. Baker to cripple Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. Hendry signed everybody and his brother on the team to big, fat, long-term, no-trade-clause contracts and now he’s stuck with them. He showered Alfonso Soriano with gold through 2014 (when he’ll be 38 years old, unable to run around the mound — much less the bases, and still incapable of laying off the outside curve.) He allowed Baker to miscast LaTroy Hawkins as a closer. When the time came to dump Sammy Sosa, Hendry did everything he could — up to and including releasing security video of Sammy ditching the last game of the season — to destroy whatever trade value he had left. After losing out on free agent Rafael Furcal, Hendry panicked and traded a trio of decent minor league arms for the indecent Juan Pierre. Then he upended the roster of a team that had just won 97 games to sign the Lee Harvey Oswald of Major League Baseball, Milton Bradley (I didn’t do what they say I did…, I’m a patsy!)

Every night before I go to bed, I pray to the god I don’t believe in to make Jim Hendry suddenly want to up and join the Peace Corps.

Yeah, you’re right. To say, as you did, that the Cubs have not shown savvy in acquiring players (even allowing for the aforementioned glaring exceptions) is to utter the understatement of the century. And, yeah, I’m jealous as hell of a guy for whom 95 wins isn’t enough.

That said, let’s get down to cases. Is it possible for the 2010 Cubs to win anything near 95 games? Phe-e-e-e-w!

I’ll go so far as to say I’d bet the new home deed that they won’t. They can, though, win 85 to 92 games — anything within that range might well be enough to cop the NL Central. And, as I’ve said many times before, once you get into the playoffs anything can happen.

They need, as even a teething baby knows, to get rid of Gameboard. When Bradley was suspended for the remainder of the season in September, players literally lined up to tell reporters how much they approved of his banishment. That’s unheard of. It’s also prima facie evidence they see his mental illness (trust me on this diagnosis) as an unneeded distraction.

If they can palm him off on a sucker, they need to find a second baseman, a shortstop and a centerfielder. Yuck. Conventional wisdom holds that the core of a good team is up the middle. And if Geo Soto doesn’t lay off the post-toke munchies, they’ll need a catcher, too. Yikes!

Did I say 85-92 wins?

Well, yeah, I did. They have a terrific starting staff, even if it is nominally led by the puerile, bullying, prickish knucklehead, Carlos Zambrano. Ted Lilly really is the ace of the staff (his signing is another example of Hendry as Dr Jeckyll.) Ryan Dempster is a decent number three and Randy Wells appears to be a nice end-of-the rotation guy. Sweet Lou will choose between Tom Gorzelanny, Sean Marshall and Milo Samardzija’s bastard son for the fifth starter spot — not a bad choice to be faced with.

The bullpen looks fine as long as Hendry can re-sign lefty John Grabow. Carlos Marmol now seems to be taking to the closer’s role better than the set-up man’s. Angel Guzman and a slew of live-armed kids (Berg, Caridad and Stevens) will fill out the pen.

The entire staff ought to keep the team ERA hovering around 4.00, which should be good enough as long as the Cubs can find a way to score runs. If Soriano and Soto bounce back nicely, D-Lee doesn’t suddenly grow old before our eyes and Aramis simply does what he’s been doing for seven straight years, that division title is no pipe dream.

My fingers are crossed that — in lieu of some shocking blockbuster deal — Ryan Theriot and Jeff Baker can man the keystone without embarrassing themselves. As for centerfield, well, um, Hey AJ, you got a mitt?

Big Mike: My Heart Bleeds For You, AJ

Poor AJ. His boys won 95 games in 2009. Apparently they were the wrong kind of wins. Or something.

I would have sawed off my right pinkie for 95 wins (not my left pinkie, though, since I’m trying to learn how to play the guitar.)

Are your fears for the Flaming Hose really warranted? Ortiz’s RBI were “quiet”? Bay “put up terrific numbers but… he’s a bit overrated”? Papelbon “gave up walks or hits and often had difficulty finishing batters off”? Ellsbury “can be pitched to by better pitchers”? Sheesh!

Whaddya want 105 wins?

I suppose the answer yes. Who wouldn’t want 105 wins? But no one — repeat, no one — can construct a team with the expectation that they’ll win 105. Not even the colossus that occupies new Yankee Stadium won 105 (of course, they did knock off 103 opponents but let’s not quibble.)

Have the Red Sox and their fans become — dare I say it — too demanding? It seems a short half decade ago, il Nazione del Calzini Rossi would have been thrilled to string up 95 fascisti. Now, 95 wins — bah! A bag of shells.

Were I the majordomo of the Sox, I wouldn’t worry too much about Papelbon’s walks or hits (his WHIP stood at a fine 1.15.) If Bay’s putting up terrific numbers, I’d say, Keep it up, Jason my boy. As for Ellsbury’s problems with better pitchers? Um, I’d guess the reason those guys are “better pitchers” is because they get most guys out, period.

I would fret a little about David Ortiz. He’s now 34 years old and weighs 230 pounds — at least that’s what the Red Sox web site claims. His bathroom scale might dissent. His best years are like a big ass — behind him. Then again, most AL teams would drool over the prospect of their DHs putting up mediocre Ortiz numbers. The Boston club really ain’t got much to worry about does it?

Sometimes fans and even GMs can overreact. Take last off-season. After the Cubs had led the National League with 97 wins, they went out and jumped in front of that speeding bus from LA. Fans boo-hooed as if the Cubs had gone sub-.500. Lou Piniella suggested that maybe the team needed a left handed bat to counteract teams loading up with righthanders against them — as the Dodgers did. Hungry Jim Hendry promptly turned over 40 percent of his roster, mainly in an effort to afford the $30M/3-year deal he bestowed upon Milton Bradley.

Pardon me while I have a seizure. Gurgle, gulp, ack-ack-ack. The memory of the Bradley signing is now a lesion in my brain that occasionally causes electrical disturbances among my remaining several hundred neurons. Ah — all better now.

Hendry dumped Mark DeRosa, Kerry Wood and Jason Marquis, all in an effort to squeeze Gameboard into the budget. The 2009 team could have used a nice fifth starter like Marquis (who, by the way, went to the all-star game.) They would have benefitted greatly from DeRosa’s 23 home runs, especially in Aramis Ramirez’s absence. Wood? Well, he stunk the joint up with the Tribe but he still was better than the execrable Kevin Gregg.

Be careful what you wish for, AJ. What’s Theo Epstein to do? Look for a centerfielder? Yeah, you could do better than young Jacoby. You could grab Carlos Beltran from the Mets and hope he thrives in Fenway. But at what cost?

Should Theo let Bay or Drew walk? Whaddya gonna do then? Play Joey Gathright and Rocco Baldelli?

In terms of planning, a good GM walks the tightrope. He (or she — Kim Ng, I hear, is in the running for the Padres job) can’t rely on an unchanging roster year after year. He also can’t swap his assets like so many baseball cards.

The Big Mike Philosophy of Building a Baseball Team, taught at the better universities around the country, holds that the GM should build his team with an aim to win 90 games. If your team is a consistent 90-game-winner, you’ll be battling for the division title every single year. And while the team may occasionally dip to 84-78, it’ll just as often rise to 96-66. That’s definite Champagne territory.

Now you may say 96 wins is fine for the Minnesota Twins or the Colorado Rockies but the Red Sox share a division with the Yankees. Okay. Let the Yanks spend $200M every year and win the East. It’s no dishonor to sneak into the playoffs via the Wild Card. In fact, the Red Sox of 2004 rode that ticket to their first World Series win in 10,000 years (that ancient triumph over the hated Jericho Palms!)

Just because New York assembled an all-star team and danced to the division title doesn’t mean Theo (and you) should panic. Theo (and you) should start planning for a future without Big Papi but the current lineup built around Pedroia, Bay, Youkilis and Martinez (assuming everybody’s re-signed) is scarier than a Glenn Beck commentary.

Boston is a lock to win at least 90 in 2010. Even if David Ortiz’s bat continues to soften and Josh Beckett’s back continues to throb, the Red Sox, along with the Yankees and Angels, will be the cream of the league. You worry too much.

Me? I’ve got Bradley in right field, Carlos Zambrano on the mound, and a century-plus of losing on my mind. I worry.

Big Mike: The Nomar Trade

MLB Trade Rumors, one of my favorite sites, talks today about the Red Sox shortstop hole since the team traded Nomar Garciaparra to the Cubs in 2004. According to mlbtr, the Cherry Hose have used 19 shortstops in the intervening years. Yikes.

The Nomar deal was Jim Hendry at both his best and his worst.

I heard about the deal on the radio on a Saturday afternoon, the day of the trading deadline, moments before a game against the Phillies. The Cubs, of course, were scuffling to return to the post-season after they, gulp, had come within five outs of the World Series the previous year. In fact, Sports Illustrated’s baseball preview issue that March had featured Kerry Wood on the cover along with the heart-breaking prediction, “Hell Freezes Over: The Cubs Will Win The World Series!” The dopes.

Nomar Fucking Garciaparra! I could not believe my ears. He was one of the holy trinity of shortstops of the late 90 and early aughts. He, A-Rod and Jeter. The three had revolutionized the position. Oh sure, there’d been slugging shortstops before — our very own Ernie, Milwaukee’s Yount, the Tigers’ Trammell, and the Orioles’ Ripken, but they were anomalies, outliers. No team had a right to expect its shortstop to slug 30 homers or hit in the .370s. But Nomar and his fellow Short-sketeers did that kind of thing and more.

Nomar Garciaparra. The Cubs were nine games over .500 that day. They stood in second place 10 games behind the surprising Cardinals. There was still plenty of time to catch the Birds or, failing that, to win the Wild Card. All the Cubs had to do was make the post-season. With that starting pitching — Wood, Mark Prior, Carlos Zambrano, Greg Maddux and Matt Clement — the Cubs would scare the poo out of all comers in the playoffs. The shortstops prior to the deal had been Ramon Martinez and Alex S. Gonzalez. Nice fellows, I’m sure. Loved by their families. Upstanding citizens. Horseshit shortstops.

Jim Hendry smelled blood that Saturday and arranged the mother of all four-team trades. Working with Theo Epstein in Boston as well as the Twins and the A’s, Hendry snagged Nomar Garciaparra. The team was complete. Not a hole in the lineup.

When Hendry sets his sights on a target, he’ll move heaven and Earth to get him. When Johnnie B. Baker seemed to have fallen out of favor with the Giants at the end of the 2002 season, Hendry bided his time as all the other candidates he’d interviewed for his vacant manager’s position took jobs elsewhere. No one could say if the Giants would retain their World Series skipper. But Hendry still waited. Some ten days after the Series ended, Hendry and Baker held a press conference together.

After the Cubs had stunk up the joint in 2006, finishing last with a 66-96 record, Hendry identified Lou Piniella as the man who’d lead them out of the darkness. Lou, who was 62 at the time and happy doing occasional color commentary for Fox Sports, was persuaded to come aboard thanks to Hendry’s silver tongue and TribCo’s fat wallet.

Then Hendry spied Alfonso Soriano on the free agent market. Possessed of rabbit speed and Paul Bunyan power, Soriano was the jewel of the 2006-07 off-season. Hendry outbid the Angels and others for his services over dinner one November night. He told Fonzie they wouldn’t leave the table until the player had shaken on a deal.

Last off-season, Lou hinted to Hungry Jim that the Cubs might want to add a little left-handed thunder to the lineup. Whereupon Hendry inked Milton Bradley, who’d just turned in the season of his career.

It’s refreshing to have a Cub honcho who’s greedy, impatient, unafraid to take a gamble,  and doesn’t care how much he has to spend to bring a winner to Wrigley. And Hendry is nothing but greedy, whether it comes to Jack Daniel’s, crullers or big-name outfielders.

On the other hand, with the arguable exception of Lou, each of the aforementioned coups looks like the result of a man picking answers out of a hat. Yeah sure, Baker was known as a players’ managers who could handle moody superstars but he also had a rep as a destroyer of young arms. The core of the team Hendry entrusted Dusty with was that young pitching staff. Oops.

Soriano was hoped to challenge the 40-40 barrier every year for the foreseeable future when he became a Cub. But his are a young player’s skills and he was already approaching his mid-30s.

Bradley, of course, has long been known as the loose cannon of the big leagues. Yet Hendry still exposed him to the pressure cooker that is Wrigleyville. That big left-handed bat, impaired by several mini-nervous breakdowns this past summer, produced a single home run and a paltry nine RBI.

Even the Lou hiring can be second guessed. Piniella remade the team in his image, sure, refashioning the attitude in the clubhouse in the process. But when the Cubs backslid this year, the old goat seemed as interested in the proceedings as a freshman in algebra class.

So, yeah, the Bosox have burned through 19 shortstops since they exiled Nomar to the North Side. But they knew that despite his big name, Garciaparra was about finished being Garciaparra. He was rapidly and dramatically becoming just another ballplayer. They found a willing taker in a man who loves Big Names.

The Red Sox, though, have won the World Series twice since that deal. The Cubs? Well…, you know.