Cubs Management

A bit of an old news at this point, but the previous thread is overloaded with yet another should the Cubs spend or wait to develop some talent first argument. A good 2-3 years more of that discussion...I'm excited.

The big news is that the Cubs fired Oneri Fleita, VP Of player personnel. Of course, last September, Fleita was about to jump ship to the Detroit Tigers and Ricketts gave him a 4-year deal before hiring Theo Epstein. Some thought such a move before hiring a GM would scare off potential top candidates and that was obviously proved wrong. Ricketts did his homework, knowing Fleita was well-respected in the business, while certainly assuring any prospective candidates that if they decided otherwise, he'd eat the contract...better to whiff on a 4-year management contract than a 4-year player contract. 10 months later, that seems to be happening. Epstein had nothing but nice things to say about Fleita and Fleita will certainly catch on somewhere else, which probably means Ricketts will only on the hook for the difference in salaries.

Besides Fleita, the Cubs manager of Baseball Information was also fired, Chuck Wasserstrom. I'm guessing his Excel spreadsheets running on Windows 3.1 weren't sophisticated enough for the TheJedi. Ari Kaplan's job title (Manager of Statistical Information) was also eliminated, but Kaplan will remain within the organization as a consultant.

Cubs are laying a 6-1 ass-whooping through 5 on the Astros behind 2 DeJesus home runs and 1 by Castro along with the pitching of Justin Germano.