Bleacher Bums Forum

I really think Rickets is in way over his head.

In the video I post a few days ago, of papa Rickets speaking to a group of folks about his sons affection for the Cubs and the "family decision" to buy the Cubs, it was described much along the following lines:

Tom Rickets fell in love with the Cubs when he was in college, cutting classes and attending games at Wrigley, never really had done much of anything on his own in the way of operating or managing anything, but when the Cubs were put on the market he approached pops, who apparently is the one who truly controls the family wealth, and talked him into buying the Cubs so Tommy would have something to do with his time.

Perhaps my perspective on the video was overly negative, but I was frankly pretty frightened by it.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac6h2wczxGA&feature=player_embedded

And JR is suggesting that with an interested owner like Ricketts, that Ricketts himself might be heavily invested both in the budget determinations, the big-contract authorizations, and perhaps the GM hiring as well.  In which case, what does the pres do? 

That fits with the suggestion I made a couple days ago that Tom Ricketts may consider himself capable of performing the president's job and delegating everything else.

No, I might be wrong, but I have my doubts a billionaire owner like Ricketts is all that interested in running the day to day business operations of the franchise and being his own president.  Sure he's interested in how his business is performing and wants it performing well, but for the most part, I think he'd rather enjoy being the owner of the team and leave things like accounting, finance, marketing, and other operational responsibilities for the most part up to his team president. 

And I think in terms of a GM search, yes he'll be interested in how it's conducted, and yes he'll have a significant say in the final result.  But the operations of conducting that search, like hiring a search firm and such, I think he'd rather leave to his president.

Here in my limited expertise of executive decision making by a baseball franchise is how I'd imagine a search for a new GM would go.

1.  Tom Ricketts and Crane Kenney discuss what kind of GM Ricketts wants to hire. 

(By now, I'm sure Kenney knows what kinds of things Ricketts wants in a GM, like someone with a statistical background and someone who emphasizes farm development.  He may even make it a point that he wants someone who will be comfortable retaining Tim Wilken and working with him.)

2.  Ricketts delegates to Kenney the task of selecting a search firm to recruit GM candidates. 
 
(Again like everything else with baseball operations, he's interested in the big picture of how well the team is performing, but in the day to day stuff like regular communications with a search firm, he leaves that up to Kenney.)

3.  Kenney selects a search firm and handles most of the daily back and forth with them.  Kenney is the one that makes it clear to the search firm what kind of GM they're looking for (years of experience, having statistical background, scouting and development background, willingness to work with Wilken, etc.).   

4.  Search firm meets with both Ricketts and Kenney to go over prospective GM candidates that meet their criteria.  Together they pick 4 or 5 guys they want to interview.   

5.  Ricketts and Kenney meet with the top 4-5 candidates.

6.  They both come to a decision, which by this point in the process will probably be one they're both on the same page with or at least will be mutually agreeable to both.  Ricketts obviously has the final call on this.

Agree, Dave.  Which is why I don't think the president makes much difference to the success of the Cubs in terms of W-L.  The pres might be involved and have at least some input in hiring/firing decisions regarding the GM, but that's about it. 

Other than trying to favorably influence things that involve club revenue, which of course trickles down into what the GM's baseball budget is allowed to be. 

I agree, Craig.  I doubt that Kenny has any direct effect on the won-lost record of the Cubs.  Nor would a new president, unless he was given much more extensive responsibility than Kenny has been given.

JR - I agree that Kenny will not decide who is the GM next year, other than to give Ricketts advice.

Carrie Muskat:

Since coming off the disabled list on May 29, Geovany Soto is 4-for-26 with 10 Ks.

I think Colvin was a bad move.  They should have kept him in Iowa until his confidence was all the way back.

Soto . . . well it wasn't like he was playing very well before he went on the DL anyway.

You shouldn't.

Tyler Colvin had a pretty productive year in 2010 and Gary Scott never came close to approaching productive for the Cubs.

Scott had a great Spring Training once and hit a grand slam after an incredible at-bat and that's about it as far as his usefulness.

At least the Cubs got 20+ homers from Colvin one year.

It's not his fault that they didn't sell high on him.