Spiegel: Perhaps The Worst Cubs Idea Of All Time
The Ryne Sandberg as bench coach idea, under Mike Quade as manager, would be the dumbest in an impressive line of bad Cubs maneuvers. Will Carroll of SI.com reported this as a possibility from a source.
If the Cubs do this, they are courting a split locker room, inviting media derision, and begging for a fan uprising at the hint of a losing streak.
If you wanted Ryno as part of your team, why didn't you just do it during the season when you had so many chances to do so? I was a proponent of making him Lou Piniella's bench coach for the second half of the year, which would have eliminated the only knock people have on him: big league experience. Lou might have gone for it too, making a graceful exit while helping to train the darling of the franchise.
There's no way Will Carroll's report is true. It can't possibly be true.
Will Carroll On The Laurence Holmes Show
Podcast
My Hit and Run partner Barry Rozner wrote it in the Herald yesterday. The time to name someone was the last 2 days…right now. You're between MLB playoff series, and before Jim Hendry's desired October 15th timetable.
But they didn't…Tom Ricketts wants to wait for November 15th, remember? That means offering it to Joe Girardi.
I still think there's no way Girardi comes. No chance. His agent is working to spread the opposite amongst baseball people, but I still contend that's only to use the Cubs for what they ought to be renamed: The Chicago Leverage. Girardi will get an enormous deal to stay with the Yankees.
Jim Hendry doesn't want Joe Girardi. He didn't want him last time. Girardi had to beg for an interview last time…when they hired Lou. Think about that…he had to work to get an interview. And the man who didn't want you then, is still surprisingly in charge, despite his many failings.
If you're Girardi…you want to come here? Really? With a bad roster full of dead money veterans and over-hyped youngsters? With all due respect to Byrd, Dempster, Marmol, Marshall, Castro, Colvin, and Cashner, you really want to coach the rest of that lot? You want to come here to work for a GM that didn't want you in the first place, who also appears to be pretty bad at his job? You want to come here to work for an ownership that is entrusting the baseball operations to the aforementioned bad GM, who again doesn't want you in the first place? You want to leave the Yankees for this?
This job will be there for Girardi again down the road. Perhaps one day it'll be there with a clean slate, coupled with a GM who he wants to work with and believes in.
Until then…give it to Quade. Or give it to Sandberg. Let them choose a bench coach, an old baseball salt to sit with and kick things around. Hell, it'll be the only coach they get to choose anyway.
