“The Heckler” on a Fan Speaks Out

October 7, 2007

Jim Hendry Interview - 2007

With the Cubs on the brink of the playoffs, Jim Hendry wears the hero crown again. But the last two years, with the team a big disappointment, he wore the goat horns, asking why he didn’t do more to improve the club. In this interview, he addresses the issue if his hands were tied by Andy MacPhail, just what Alfonso Soriano was promised when the Cubs signed him, his thoughts on Lou Piniella, and what player surprised him this year.
(Editor’s note: This interview was conducted prior to the start of the post-season)

The Heckler: How did it affect your job this year with the Tribune being for sale?

Jim Hendry: I know people don’t believe this, but it really didn’t at all. We had a bad year last year and I knew we had to get back on track. I didn’t occupy my time at all about who might own the club or what was going to happen to me. I didn’t think about it one bit. I figured we got a job to do, and its win a lot more games than we won last year, and if you won enough games, everything else falls in place. I knew all along that the Tribune people that are running it are not going to sell it to somebody that’s going to take the organization backwards. So I felt if we do well, the next people who come in are going to continue and keep trying to win.

TH: it seemed like you had a bigger budget to work with this year. Did Andy MacPhail limit your ability to make moves the past couple of years?

JH: No, it was nothing to do with that. Our budget really is probably less than ten million dollars more this year than it was last year. Everybody keeps on focusing on the $300 million number, two hundred of that went to Ramirez and Soriano, which is spread out over five to eight years. I don’t put anything on the Tribune or Andy ever the last couple of years when we weren’t successful. I certainly had a fair budget to work with and I had enough resources to do better, so I blame myself more than anybody else.

TH: How was John McDonough different coming in as President of the team?

JH: John and I have been friends for a long time. I spent a lot of my time in his office over the years when I wasn’t working here. I think John had a sense of urgency that he wanted to try to get a lot better real quick. I think he certainly had an influence on some of the people at the Tribune Tower to let me do it the way that we did it. He let us make the decisions that I felt we needed to make going into the season.

TH: How much influence did Lou Piniella have on the team you put together this year?

JH: We kept Lou abreast, and I’m from the school that the General Manager and the Manager have to have a strong mutual respect, and that relationship is the most important one in the organization. He has to trust me that I’m going to give him the best ball club that I can, and I have to trust him that he’s going to do whatever he can every night to try to win that ball game. We had him involved in the organizational meetings and I kept him posted on what we’re doing, but our plan with our scouts, we started last July, working on what we wanted to do, and a lot of the things that we targeted and were acted upon were well in place before Lou was hired.

TH: It seemed like when Dusty Baker was here, he just wanted to manage, where as Lou seems to want to get his hands into everything. Was that the case?

JH: Not really. I treated both managers exactly the same. Myself and our front office and our scouts, we put the club together. Not the coaches or the manager.

TH: Did Lou Piniella have any role in the team trading Michael Barrett, because it seemed like he lost confidence in him?

JH: No. Michael didn’t catch well this year. Michael played well for a couple of years and we thought he was on the rise. His defense, unfortunately took a step backwards, and I think we all collectively felt like for everyone’s good, we had to make the change.

TH: Is Lou Piniella what you thought you were getting when you hired him?

JH: Absolutely. I’ve had a great first year with him. We have a close relationship now. He’s all about winning. He’s got the knack, some people just have it. He’s got the knack where the club has continued to get better. He doesn’t panic when things don’t go well. I find him to be cognizant of the whole organization, not just let me win tomorrow and the hell with everybody else. We hired a couple of minor league coaches. He’s obviously played our minor league system guy’s way more than we ever have in the history of the organization probably since Dallas Green was here. He has a good relationship with our farm director Oneri Fleita and Tim Wilken, our scouting director. He cares about how the system is and who we’re drafting; things that the average person on the street wouldn’t think he’s like that.

TH: Comparing his style with Dusty Baker, one of the things he’s done is play a lot of the young players, and there was always a question about Dusty not liking to play young ballplayers.

JH: It’s hard to say. The first couple of years here with Dusty were very good. Then we had the injuries and it got away, but I’m not really here to compare one against the other. The first year in ’03, we were five outs away from going to the Promised Land, and Dusty could have been the mayor. There’s no sense looking back. I had to make a change and I think we hired the right guy.

TH: Everyone expected this team to hit for power this year, and until this month, they really didn’t perform up to expectations. In your opinion, was it the wind patterns or was it more than that?

JH: Obviously it was a factor early, but it was for both clubs. Who knows why, it’s hard to describe. What we’ve been doing this last month is what I thought we would do. I thought we’d have a good balance of guys hitting for average and three or four guys hitting thirty home runs. Hopefully we’ll keep just going for two to six more weeks and hit for power, but a lot of the other things we were worried about we handled fine. Our bullpens been good, our defense has been much better than people thought. The thing we worried about the least ended up hurting us the most for awhile.

TH: The team has had a difficult time hitting in the clutch this year. Any reason you can think of for the difficulty hitting with runners in scoring position?

JH: We’ve got guys that have been hitting all their lives knocking in runs. Baseball is a funny game. It’s a very cyclical game. We certainly haven’t knocked in the runs all of the time. It’s a tough game as you know, and the average fan wouldn’t understand, “Gee, I wonder why they couldn’t get that guy in today from third.” That guy out there is paid to pitch against you too. But we haven’t done as well as we could have; we haven’t been able to blow some games open. But I think we’re getting hot at the right time, and from where we were in May, I think we would take where we are today. We were probably one or two weeks away from being in a disastrous situation, and Lou really helped right the ship. I’m a big believer in it’s not how you start, its how you finish. So if we swing the bats well in the next few weeks here, all of those days when we didn’t get the runs in will be forgotten.

TH: When you signed Alfonso Soriano, was he promised he would get to bat lead-off?

JH: He asked us where we wanted to hit him and Lou and I both told him one. And I think that’s where he should hit. His numbers in his career have been better when he hits one. It’s easy to say why don’t you hit him three, four, or five, he knocks in more runs. When he’s hit in those positions in the past, he hasn’t knocked in the runs. Has he had a super - superstar year – no. He’s had a solid year. He’s been hurt a couple of times. He’s got twenty-seven home runs now; I think he’ll get into the thirties. (The interview was conducted September 18^th.) And I think you’ll see a guy next year who gets back well into the forties. I have no problem with him hitting one.

TH: Ryan Theriot has been a key player for the team this year? Coming into the season, it seemed he was thought of as more of a utility player. Is he better than the organization evaluated he was going to be?

JH: No, he’s exactly what we thought we had. He earned the job. We thought Izturis was going to be better than he was. This guy won a gold glove a few years ago. We loved Ryan, we just wanted to get a deeper ball club, and we’re certainly glad we did. A lot of people thought, “Oh why did you sign DeRosa?”  “You’ve got Theriot.” I don’t think we have to answer that question anymore. DeRosa had played right field well, he’s played third base great, he’s played second base well. It wasn’t a question of anything about Ryan; it was a question of getting better. You can’t have too many good players. And the people that deserve to play, they end up playing, and that’s what Ryan did. He kept his mouth shut, didn’t b**** about who we signed, went to spring training, earned Lou’s respect, beat out Izturis and won the job. That’s the way it should be.

TH: He (Theriot) seems to be the first position player drafted by the organization that has come up and done well right from the start. Is there any reason why the organization has such a tough time developing position players?

JH: We’ve probably drafted more pitchers. I think we’re fifth in the game in major league players produced since 1995. You said Ryan’s had success early; Ryan was almost released in Double A. It’s been a long grind for Ryan Theriot. He was drafted in 2001. I think the farm system speaks for itself now. Who has three starting pitchers (Zambrano, Hill, and Marshall) in their rotation that are home grown out of five? At one point this year, we had fourteen players in the dugout that were home grown players. Our farm system doesn’t have to apologize to anyone. We’ve contributed from our system probably as much as almost anyone in the National League this year besides Arizona.

TH: You mentioned that the organization concentrated on drafting pitching more than position players for several years. It seems like a lot of the pitchers that were drafted in the first or second rounds have either been released or traded, or in the case of Donnie Veal and Grant Johnson, not performing up to expectations. How come there hasn’t been more impact at the major league level from the pitchers you drafted?

JH: It’s baseball. You don’t draft ten guys in the first ten rounds and they all become superstars. So you can take that sheet that you’re asking the questions from and just about attack twenty-five other clubs. It’s a tough business. It isn’t like football or basketball where you get picked in the second round and you go right to the NFL and you start. You’ve got to work your way up the ladder and a lot of things can go wrong.

TH: Carlos Zambrano is obviously a very good pitcher, but it seems like he should be even better than he is right now. How much does Larry Rothschild have to do with the success of the pitching staff, and how much responsibility does the pitching coach have for the success or failure of the pitching staff?

JH: The guys still have to go out there and pitch. Larry’s one of the top five guys in the game. We get calls every year people want to hire Larry away from us. Carlos is twenty-five, twenty-six years old. He’s shown signs of greatness, he’s had some hiccups along the way, he’s had some immature days. I think he’ll get better and better. I know our pitching staff is in good hands. You can’t fool the players. If you go down there and take a survey of the twelve pitchers in the dugout, they’ll tell you they think the world of Larry Rothschild, and that’s good enough for me.

TH: Does a pitching coach have a lot of effect on how good a pitcher can become?

JH: He can make a difference. Preparation, and knowing the hitters around the league, making people better, making people learn how to handle adversity. Look at the improvement Marmol’s made, look at the improvement Rich Hill’s made, Marshall’s made a big jump up, Ted Lilly’s better than he’s ever been, Marquis’ on the comeback trail from a disastrous year. Bobby Howry’s never pitched this well, Dempster got converted to a closer and has done a good job. Larry’s done a lot of good things.

TH: You mentioned Cesar Izturis earlier who you got in the trade for Greg Maddux last year from the Dodgers. He’s no longer with the team and right now you have nothing to show from that trade. (The Cubs are owed a player in November.) Was there any thought when you made the trade to ask for some top minor league players from the Dodgers, because they have one of baseballs’ deeper systems?

JH: No, we talked about it. There’s a few guys you weren’t going to get. Greg was going to be there for a couple of months, which he was. Greg and I worked the deal together. Greg had a few teams he would go to. I helped Greg. Greg helped us. Ask twenty-nine people in Major League baseball, nobody ever thought a year later Cesar Izturis would be sitting on somebody’s bench. He was a good player that had a regression year and he’s now playing in Pittsburgh. At the time, it was a good deal for us.

TH: Has any player on the team really surprised you this year with how well they’ve done?

JH: We always loved him and we thought he was going to be good but I think Marmol’s progress has been phenomenal. I think he changed the whole ball club, the way the pen sets up. Theriot winning the job at short. We thought Theriot would get a lot of playing time but not necessarily every day at short. Fontenot came out of nowhere. We didn’t even have him at big league camp. He helped us for a couple of months, but I think Marmol would be the most important. I think that the whole bullpen changed once he came up here and got established.

TH: I know you have to be happy with the team with where they’re at right now in the playoff race. Have you had any thoughts for yourself in the future beyond this year with the team up for sale?

JH: No, I’m not worried about it. We’ve got to win here, that’s all. I come from the school that I’m going to come to work everyday and do the best I can, and hopefully some day, we’re having a parade at the end of the year. I can’t control who’s going to own the club, or who they might want to be the GM. So there’s no sense worrying about it.

SportzNutz Columnist Darrell Horwitz isn’t shy when it comes to “A Fan Speaking Out”… he holds nothing back and tells it like it is, from a fan’s perspective.  A Chicago native, Darrell is a lifelong Cubs and Bulls fan. Along with his “A Fan Speaks Out” column, Darrell is the fan writer for the Chicago Cubs, here on SportzNutz.  If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email Darrell at darrell.horwitz@nutzworld.net