Not trying to take away from ASFB, but everytime I go over this Hendry crap it gets me more and more "aggravated"

He was fired a month ago, but was retained to sign the guys he picked in the draft? Why was he even there to pick the guys in the draft??????????????????????????? If he is good enough to pick your future players and good enough to be here for the trading deadline, then keep him?????

The amazing poor timing of Ricketts continues.

So in summary it took Ricketts 4 years to evaluate Hendry!

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

tom ricketts is just not a smart man

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tommy ricketts is really really smart. he is a self made millionaire, oh wait, his dad is the one that made millions and then hired his son, who hung out in the bleachers most of the time in the summer instead of really working. but that gives him the knowledge to run the cubs thank god we have a diehard cub fan owning the team. hopefully instead of hiring a GM, tommy just says he will do it himself. he knows player talent, he is a fan.

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Frank Coztansa wrote:
Please die in a fire.

from my understanding joe ricketts is the founder of td ameritrade..what exactly did tom do?

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What the hell are you talking about? What is it that this brilliant leader is doing exactly? Keeping people around him who are good at kissing his ass but little else? This Hendry deal was some of the WORST leadership I could think of. Ricketts was too much of a pussy to just fucking fire the motherfucker before the trade deadline, before picks signings.
He basically went to Hendry, said "you're fired.... later". Some leader.
If you can, please outline for me the brilliant leadership that you see with this bozo.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Oh I know!
LEADERSHIP! Giving out booklets outlining 103 years of failure to new Cubs so they understand "Cubs Culture!" of of choking away every possible opportunity they've had for a title since 1908!

That's a solid leadership decision. Love the message here. Year One, turn the page, wait that didn't work out, so let's go back and give everyone a history lesson! Fail fail fail. Excellent lesson.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

What did Ron Santo win? What did Ernie Banks win? How do those people represent anything more than a historic choke job? How does celebrating people who lost historically and still were loved instill a winning attitude? Honestly your hyperbole strip joint probably WOULD be a better way to install a winning attitude than celebrating people who never ever won anything.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Ok Bernstein, the people kissing his ass are clearly Craine Kenney and Jim Hendry, notorious gladhanders and baby kissing brownnosers.

I don't need to THINK he was a bad GM, I only have to look at the results. One of the TOP 10??? How can you arrive at that? Was he top in wins? nope. Did he win a championship in 9 years? nope. but 9 other GM's did... was he 10th behind those champions? How did his sub .500 record give him status of a top 10 GM? I'm sorry you can barely make a case for him being a top 25 GM.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Does he know what love is though?

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

You should care about Kenney. He's the bag man.
And where was this genius baseball man when he chose Quade? When he traded Lilly? The early dismissal of Matt Clement, the LaTroy Hawkins hilarity, Neifi Perez, David Kelton, Chad Fox, The Rich Hill experiment, the Patterson mishandling, Jody garut, Cezar Izturus and Tony Womack, Freddy Bynum??? the Mike Fontenot Wuv, JACQUE JONES, Wiltin' MILTON BRADLEY, SORIANO, HAMFIGHTING MURTON!1! The Steve trachsel redux, The over estimated Felix Pie in the Sky! The ridiculous Aaron MILES, since we've mentioned Miles the ill advised loss of Mark DeRosa....
I dunno, a lot of oopsies in there if you ask me for a top 10 GM.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

examples please!

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like who?

aint it the other way around? bringing in high-priced free agents and watching them fail?

the Cubs are known for not producing any front-line position-player talent...they also have not produced any front-line starters since Prior, Wood, and Zambrano

Dempster was a reclamation project that worked out, but that's Rothschild's work...even hendry himself didnt have visions of him lasting as long as he has with us

Soto is steady but hasnt repeated his rookie year stats yet, and is average defensively

Ramirez was already established when we brought him over (thus, not crap as u claim)...we got him in a salary dump

Look around the league, and you're hard-pressed to find many ex-Cubs in the 15 daily boxscores...about the only guys I look up to follow are Theriot, Patterson, and Fuld...the latter 2 are part-time players, as are Fontenot and Juan Cruz

bottom line, the league doesnt have much of a concentration of our homegrown talent...we fucking suck, and the league knows it

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Remember year 1? Nothing that happened in the past matters anymore?

And then to totally contradict himself, he hands out books to rookies trumpeting the Cubs great history. Wow, that must be a compelling read.

Also teams just aren't willing to give up top prospects at the break? Might want to check into that one, Tom.

And none of those draft picks would have taken the boatload of money Tom handed out without Jim Hendry at the helm? I find that very hard to believe.

How much worse could it have been if Tom would have shown the whole circus the door on "Year 1"?

The more I think about Hendry being kept around, the more ridiculous the whole thing seems.

Here's Tom's big chance. Better not screw this one up !

ah, so u mean trades

those were bully moves early in his tenure...once people caught onto his used-car salesman ways, it stopped...and as Ive said before, he never could hang with the big boys...he always took advantage of smaller market teams, especially the Pirates and Orioles...never did u see him make trades with the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, etc...those GM's had no respect for him

the reality is, Bully's personality lends himself to being a small-market GM...he wants to feel in control of people, and when that doesnt happen, he crumbles...he crumbled in a big world

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he was still a young player at that time on a terrible team, but with upside...he already had good power numbers before we got him...he wasnt "established crap" (.300, 34 HR, 112 RBI in 2001)...he was a young power hitter about to come into his own...he would have done this on any team, because he had talent

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And here's where the failure of Hendry is truly shown.

Prior to his promotion to GM, he was named Assistant GM/Player Personnel Director on October 12, 2001, and previously the Director of Player Development, in charge of both Scouting and Minor League Operations.

Now, if he was any good in those positions there would have been talent ready in the minors to maybe take the place of the dogs that he signed. And there wasn't. No one even close.

So he failed on the big league and minor league level. The Z, Ramirez and Soriano is already dead money. The money has been spent. No GM or manager is going to change that.

It doesn't change the facts regarding Hendry. Lots of money spent, not a great minor league system and no rings. That's his legacy.

And Tommy's handling of this team does not inspire a lot of confidence right now. But he can redeem himself.

We'll see.

Is this Ricketts' second year as owner or his first?

Thanks!

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I follow where my mind goes...

After reading some of this and some other related threads.....how's the weather up Hendry's ass? This is really quite simple...

1. He made some good trades pillaging financially inept teams of some of their up and coming star players. Aram and Lee were both very talented and young with their respective teams and neither team was going to pay their next big contracts. He did a great job of getting them for absolutely nothing.

2. He was basically given a blank check that previous Cubs GM's were not and he spent all of it recklessly. He became the Dan Snyder of baseball except he can't cut his mistakes. He paid everyone and he paid them alot more than they should have gotten. As a GM you have to make the tough call and also have the vision to let a Big Z go instead of locking him up with a massive contract and the same with Aram. He also knew exactly what he was getting in Soriano and Bradley and still signed them. Soriano has done some things offensively on occasion but the contract he got was absurd. Signing Bradley should have gotten him fired immediately. That was fucking dumb and inexcusable.

3. The 2003 team was legit and should have gone further in the playoffs. The 07 and 08 teams were stat whores with absolutely no substance which is why they were both dispatched of with ease in the playoffs. They were so vulnerable those two years and it was exploited in October.

4. Allowing the Country Club atmosphere to thrive shows bad leadership all the way from the top.

5. Wilken has helped out tremendously but before him there was some god awful drafting.

6. As I think the Stone Pony was saying....there is zero continuity between the player development staff and the scouting department that does the drafting. They need a new minor league field coordinator who is on the same page as Wilken and shares in his vision and for the fucking love.....stresses playing basic fundamental baseball. The Dodgers are a bad place to be now so it might be a good idea to look into getting their field coordinator as he used to be the Angels field coordinator a few years back and he did a great great job with them.


All that being said I think Hendry could do a decent job somewhere else where there are some people above him to keep him in check from making dumb free agent signings and from allowing him to throw the veterans bones to keep them happy and from letting them think the organization is merely their country club. Put him in a mid-market with a firm budget and he could be productive.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

Well put, UMN

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So you're now backing off your support of Hendry? Good move because your arguments lack substance. All anyone needs to know is Hendry never learned. Perfect example is the 7.3M he gave Grabow. He was projected to get a 1 yr 2M deal and Hendry "rewarded" him with 7.3M! Maybe he was trying to make his trade for Grabow look good by keeping the guy and "rewarding" him? Classic country club BS. Reward all these vets then they lay down on you. Hendry blew tens of millions on worhtless vets, never developed the farm system when he was in charge of it and then turned the franchise into a total joke by hiring Mike Fucking Quade!

You are smart to back off your support because nice guy Hendry never delivered the goods. His "aw shucks" mentality didn't cut it and he got what he deserved.