Cubs, Perhaps, Give In To Chapman Temptation

Ordinarily, I’d guess that Tom Ricketts makes it a policy, across all of his businesses, to avoid actively alienating large swaths of his customer bases. Without having done the research, though, I can’t say that with 100 percent certainty. For all I know, the internet could be crawling with records of interactions like:

RICKETTS: Are you enjoying your bison dog?

CUSTOMER: Yes, it’s delicious! What’s your secret?

RICKETTS: It’s 50 percent human flesh.

CUSTOMER: JESUS CHRIST! What the hell’s the matter with you?

RICKETTS: You’re making a lot of moral judgments for a cannibal.

Which brings us to last week with the Cubs. And in this metaphor, Aroldis Chapman is soylent green. The Chapman acquisition is not something that can be hand-waved away with a phrase like “every team has a few jerks.” Being confronted with the prospect of cheering for Aroldis Chapman is something entirely different than Cubs fans of this era have had to deal with. But that wasn’t the only thing that felt a little off about this deal. In baseball terms, quite separate from the personal issues that Ricketts putatively addressed before the acquisition, the Chapman trade was a shock because it was the first time Theo Epstein’s front office made a move with the Cubs that ran somewhat contrary to his team-building philosophy of “building a foundation for sustained success.”

Indeed, this deal, for the most part, was about this year and this year only—there’s no guarantee that Chapman will sign an off-season extension, or that the Cubs will pursue one. And there are some discordant echoes there, if you listen. Listen to Epstein describing his trade for Adrian Gonazalez and signing of Carl Crawford, back in 2011:

“There was always a tension between the scouting and development approach and what I call ‘The Monster.’ ‘The Monster’… was that we had to be bigger, better. There had to be more, more, more… There was always an inherent tension between what we were good at, what we wanted to do–the long-term approach–and this Monster… There came a point where we were almost too big and I lost my willingness to cling to that patience and the approach I thought made us good. I thought we gave in and tried to take the shortcut, and I don’t think there are any shortcuts in baseball.” (Francona Ch. 14, loc. 4576)

Fast-forward to 2016 and Epstein has made another seismic move to give the Cubs a quick fix at the end of the bullpen. Except it’s a quick fix for something that wasn’t all that broken.

While the Cubs’ bullpen has had its issues, the 8th and 9th innings have not generally been among them. As Jared Wyllys and Ryan Davis have both pointed out last week, Hector Rondon has been an elite-level pitcher all season and Pedro Strop has been very good as well. Rondon’s pitching slash line—1.74 ERA/2.43 FIP/2.64 DRA—reads like an All Star. His WHIP (0.68) is similar to Clayton Kershaw’s. And that’s exactly the way you want your sentences to end when you describe a pitcher, unless they start with the words “His ability to grow a beard…”

Fact is, the Cubs had no real need for a closer, coming into the trade deadline. Sure, there’s the benefit of pushing Strop into the seventh, and Rondon into the eighth, but there were other ways to improve the seventh inning. The only thing Rondon couldn’t do in that ninth-inning role was throw 105 MPH. And with a pitcher who did do exactly that on the market, Epstein decided that the time was suddenly right for “bigger, better” and “more, more, more.” And it mattered little, apparently, how much he’d have to pay to get that.

You can almost hear Tom Werner saying “We need to start winning in more exciting fashion.” (Francona Ch. 13, loc. 4365) And for a team that’s only in year two of their window of contention, that’s a little concerning to hear.

The end result of acquiring Chapman is that the Cubs moved mountains in order to protect the seventh inning. It’s certainly an improvement that makes the team better in the playoffs. But it’s hard to imagine that this front office couldn’t figure out a way to do that without giving up their number one and number four prospects.

One of the most telling phrases Epstein used when he addressed the media following the Chapman trade was “If not now, when?” Up until this point, I would say one of my favorite things about Epstein’s tenure is that he never made a personnel decision based on a No Fear shirt from 1995.

At no point this year has any Cubs press conference transcript read:

“Hey Theo, why did you give eight years to Jason Heyward?”

“To live the ultimate dream you must face the ultimate nightmare.”

It’s not buzz or TV ratings that’s driving the Cubs front office to make this kind of move. They’re clearly doing well enough in both areas. But the Chapman trade shows that “The Monster” in the room might be the very real opportunity to finally end the World Series drought. This team feels so close, and so the temptation has to be unbearable. With the Chapman trade, perhaps, the Cubs gave in.

Work Cited:

Francona, Terry with Dan Shaughnessy. Francona: The Red Sox Years. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Kindle ebook file.

Lead photo courtesy Dennis Wierzbicki—USA Today Sports.