Cubs blueprint bad fit for Jays
Epstein magic makes rebuild seem sexy . . . fans won’t buy it
One of the standard baseball clichés thrown about whenever a team underachieves with a roster of veteran players is “let’s blow this up and rebuild.” It was being talked about earlier this season with the Blue Jays, and even into the trade deadline with third baseman Josh Donaldson.
The feeling among fans is that it’s easy to load up the farm system by trading established players for multiple prospects, put up with a couple of losing seasons, then elevate the studs from the farm and compete hard.
Let’s look at how the Chicago Cubs — who opened a three-game series against the Jays on Friday — advanced from 61-101 in Theo Epstein’s first year as president in 2012 to a World Series win four years later, snapping a drought of 108 seasons without a championship. This is the same guy who ended the Curse of the Bambino with a 2004 World Series win in Boston. This is Fortune magazine’s gold medallist as best leader in the world, leaving the Pope with a bronze.
The point is, it’s not that easy. Not every baseball organization has Theo Epstein.
In Epstein’s first season, the Cubs had a player payroll of $109.3 million (all dollar figures U.S.) and won 61 games. In his second and third seasons, they improved to 66 and then 73 wins. Epstein had dropped the team payroll to $92.7 million in 2014 by basically blowing up a bad team, then starting the rebuild but enduring three tough seasons.
Luckily for him, Cubs fans are among the most loyal in all of sports, filling Wrigley Field win or lose.
Three dismal seasons averaging 67 wins would empty the Rogers Centre.
The moment that seemed to have been the start of the Cubs’ transition from lovable losers to World Series champs came on July 5, 2014. The Blue Jays were in Oakland for a series and the Cubs had just traded 40 per cent of their rotation, Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel, to the A’s for prospects Addison Russell, Dan Straily and Billy McKinney. Russell was the key.
First baseman Anthony Rizzo is the only everyday player left from the first three years of Epstein’s tenure.
That July 2014 trade with the A’s showed that the Cubs were preparing sooner rather than later, rebuilding a roster that would eventually defeat the Cleveland Indians in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series.
Experts had predicted the 73-win Cubs of 2014 would be contenders in 2015 with the amount of young talent knocking on the door. But Cubs management stayed coy, suggesting it was a process and one year was too soon.
But in 2015 they still had Rizzo at first, joined by Russell at second base. They had first-round picks Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber and Javier Baez, plus centre fielder Dexter Fowler — obtained in a January trade with the Astros. At the 2015 deadline, they traded for supersub and team leader Ben Zobrist.
Populating the starting rotation by that time, Epstein had stolen Jake Arrieta in an overlooked trade with the Baltimore Orioles, robbed the Texas Rangers in a trade for Kyle Hendricks, signed Jon Lester — his old friend from Boston — and resigned Hammel as depth.
The experts who predicted a Cubs contender in 2015 were correct. They went 97-65 and earned a berth in the playoffs.
Former Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi always said that the key to winning a World Series was to build a contender and then utilize free agency, or trade prospects to fill the final few holes, then let it rip. Ricciardi never reached that point in his Jays tenure, but his successor Alex Anthopoulos took that belief and ran with it at the July 2015 trade deadline — and it worked.
Epstein finally felt he’d assembled a team that could win it all. Building on what he already had — adding the final touches to a championship team — he signed outfielder Jason Heyward, starter John Lackey and reliever Trevor Cahill before the 2016 season.
With his bullpen seemingly a weakness in July of 2016, the Cubs acquired Mike Montgomery from the Seattle Mariners and bundled four players, including top infield prospect Gleyber Torres, in a deal with the Yankees for the final piece of the puzzle: flame-throwing closer Aroldis Chapman.
For Jays fans, this blueprint does not work with the team now run by president Mark Shapiro and GM Ross Atkins. Trading Francisco Liriano and Joe Smith does not equal the Cubs’ Samardzija-Hammel deal of 2014.
The current Jays are closer to a team that needs to plug a few holes and roll the dice next year, rather than one that needs three years of major league pain before any gain. But the final six weeks will help management develop a better perspective on that direction, and decide whether to build around Donaldson or trade him for some good to great prospects and start the rebuild.