A couple of takes on GM Hendry

Since it’s snowing in Chicago today and I don’t head back to Mesa for a few more days yet, I thought I’d get caught up on some reading. I came across a couple of Internet stories on Cubs GM Jim Hendry _ one based on interview done by espn.com’s Jerry Crasnick (a former baseball beat writer) and one done by Christina Kahrl of Baseball Prospectus. Speaking of BP, I hope you caught our blog of yesterday, summarizing some key points of an interesting evening with BP the other night in Chicago.

http://blogs.dailyherald.com/node/3656

First, Jerry’s story. Jerry was in Mesa during my first brief stay down there in February:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=crasnick_jerry&id=...

Among the snippets:

“As Hendry enters his eighth season as the Cubs' GM, he has the seventh-longest continuous tenure in the game behind Brian Sabean, Billy Beane, Brian Cashman, Dan O'Dowd, Kenny Williams and Mark Shapiro. Peruse his track record, and you'll find the obligatory mixed bag of hits and misses. Hendry stole Aramis Ramirez from the Pirates and Derrek Lee from the Marlins in salary-dump trades. The Ted Lilly and Mark DeRosa free-agent deals, panned at the time, worked out nicely. Ryan Dempster resurrected his career in Chicago, and Hendry has made his share of solid under-the-radar pickups in the Jim Edmonds-Reed Johnson realm.”

On the other hand: “Hendry's bigger deals ... not so much. The $136 million investment in Soriano, a Tribune Company valentine to Cubs fans, is starting to look like an organizational albatross. Kosuke Fukudome, who was widely hailed as the real thing coming out of Japan, is a .258 hitter in two seasons with the Cubs. And of course, there's the three-year, $30 million investment in Bradley, a well-intended overreaction to back-to-back Division Series sweeps… The Cubs tried to add some lefty horsepower, and they nearly blew up the car in the process.”

Jerry noted that the Cubs have made more and better use of statistical analysis in recent years (actually begun in earnest under former president Andy MacPhail): “That said, Hendry is still most comfortable picking up the phone and calling somebody who knows somebody who played Little League ball with Mike Fontenot,” Jerry writes. “He might be the best-connected executive in baseball.”

Jerry quotes MacPhail as saying: “Jim's not a tech guy. He's more of a human.”

Christina’s article is more clinical and isn't based on an interview with Hendry.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=10301

“Since getting tabbed to take up the reins mid-way through 2002, Jim Hendry's run as a general manager boasts three division titles and five winning seasons in the seven full years he's been at the helm, success that trumps Leo Durocher's run with the club, which started back before the summer of love,” Christina writes. “Cubbie-fan faithful love their summers at Wrigley Field now more than ever, with attendance topping three million for six consecutive seasons _ as far as putting cash in the till, that's the best run the franchise has ever had.

“Which sounds swell...except that there's trouble in paradise, for Hendry's club, and perhaps Hendry as well. With the Ricketts family taking over the team this winter, this isn't a case of what have you done for me lately, but what have you done for me. The veteran team he's assembled is a win-now ballclub that didn't win last year, and whose window may already be shut.”

I’m sure the next, and concluding, couple of paragraphs in the article, will draw some disagreement from Cubs camp:

“There's no major help on the horizon in terms of position players or pitchers who can alter the club's reliance on the aged, and not nearly the kind of depth that would allow Hendry to deal from to acquire that last veteran player (or three) this club needs. And can the club really afford the additional financial commitments that would push payroll well past $140 million?

“With a pre-season PECOTA projection of a record around .500, the window's already narrow, even in the parity-empowered National League. Best Cubs club of the modern era or not, if that's all there is, tearing down Hendry's team might be a chore best handed to somebody else.”

Somehow, the Cubs have managed to deal prospects for established big-leaguers the last few years, and current minor-leaguers such as Andrew Cashner, Jay Jackson, Josh Vitters, Starlin Castro and Casey Coleman have admirers among other clubs, not that the Cubs are looking to trade them. They're not.

But I thought it was interesting to get a couple of outside perspectives on the Cubs and bring them here.