By Don Jacobson
Yeah, I’m a Minnesota Twins fan. Have been ever since Harmon and Tony-O took Koufax to Game Seven in 1965. I’ve got a history with those guys – a history that includes a lot of lonely years when 8,000 people showing up at Met Stadium and later the Metrodome was considered a good night. But in all those years, never have I been as impressed with them as I was this year, when they won the AL Central in a mad dash and boasted the American League’s MVP (Justin Morneau), its Cy Young winner (Johan Santana), and its batting champion (Joe Mauer). The Cardinals and Tigers got to the World Series, but I’d say it was the Twins who had the best season of anyone.
If only the Cubs were paying attention. The Twins have won their division four of the last five years with only a fraction of the North Siders’ payroll. And yet, the Cubs stubbornly refuse to learn any lessons – as if their formula has been working. It hasn’t, and opening up the Tribune Company’s checkbook even more for someone like Alfonso Soriano won’t work either. The real answer for the Cubs, as well as just about any baseball team, is obvious: Grow your own.
It’s impossible to separate a major league baseball team’s on-field performance from its ownership. The way a team’s players play, even though the game itself is made up of individual athletic efforts, is in a subtle-but-sure way influenced by the personae of its owner(s) and management. It’s nothing that you could really ever single out on a given day or game – it comes out over time in long-term patterns of play and effort that, taken together, tell a larger tale of a franchise, a history of success or failure, a reflection of a city. That’s part of the beauty and subtlety of baseball that’s completely unmatched by any other team sport.
With that in mind, let’s look at what the Twins accomplished in 2006 in light of their ownership’s strengths and weaknesses, and compare that to the Cubs’ 2006 performance and how being owned by Tribune has influenced their on-field play.
The Twins are owned by one man: Banker and billionaire Carl Pohlad. Before he bought the team in 1984, it was owned for 70 years by the Griffith family, who moved it to Minnesota from Washington, D.C., in 1961. Pohlad made a very, very wise decision when he bought the team, which, in my opinion, has had a direct bearing on its recent success: He kept nearly all of the Griffiths’ management team intact, including its vast network of minor league managers and scouts. That meant that the same old-time baseball hands who discovered Harmon Killebrew in the 1950s also discovered Kirby Puckett in the 1980s.
The Griffiths, even in the age before free agency, were well-known as skinflints who took the cutout-bin route to finding players. They had to, because they weren’t wealthy dilettantes; they were baseball folk who had no other means of support. Fielding winning teams literally meant putting food on their table. So they plowed their meager funds back into building their baseball organization, spending comparatively modest amounts to make sure their scouts and farm managers were well taken of and given the resources they needed to become among the best in the world at one thing: Sifting through thousands of unknown quantities to find more diamonds-in-the-rough than the other teams.
For instance, the Senators/Twins were among the very first teams to systematically scout Latin America, and they’re still among the best in that respect. Not only can they sign Latin stars, but they’re always aware of which prospects held by other teams have real potential, so when trades are made for minor leaguers, it’s almost always the Twins who come out ahead. It’s paid off handsomely for them with a steady flow of Hispanic stars stretching from Camilo Pasqual to Francisco Liriano.
This system also meant that a certain style of play, initially developed by Clark and Calvin Griffith and later refined by former longtime manager Tom Kelly
to fit the Metrodome, was taught throughout its minor league system, from its lowest rookie league teams to its major league outfit. The organization also drafted and traded for talent that fit its system. This is called “organizational philosophy” – something the Cubs have never had, unless you count being virulently against players with high on-base percentages and falling in love with sluggers who strike out a lot. In the old days for the Twins, it was finding the best power hitters who could take out right-handed pitching. Later it was all about defense, baserunning and situational hitting. The style changed, but the consistancy within the organization never wavered. This meant the Twins always featured players who played as hard as they could because the organization was like a family to them. This hustle has made up for a lack of sheer talent on many, many occasions.
The biggest drawback to this approach is that the Twins are so dependent on their farm system that when it hits a dry spell, as it did during most of the 1990s, the big team will flounder. Because Pohlad is a miser, he’ll never go out and spend top dollar for free agents to smooth over the rough spots. Which gets me to thinking – what if there were a team with both spendy owners and a great farm system? Such a team could build a lasting dynasty. That franchise could be the Cubs – if they had owners who knew what they were doing.
I thought the Cubs were on just such a path 12 years ago when Tribune hired Andy MacPhail to run the team. Like me, he moved from Minnesota to Chicago in 1994. I thought there was some kind of karma in that, and that together we would be able to bring some of that Twins magic with us. But it turned out the Cubs’ corporate owner didn’t care enough about winning to do what was really needed to build the franchise into something more than a one-time phenomenon that might be able to buy its way into breaking its “curse” and then fall apart because it had no real baseball foundation. As it turns out, its real foundation was nothing more than a bunch of wild fans who worshipped Wrigley Field but in reality didn’t seem to know or care much about how you really build a winner.
The Cubs’ MacPhail years have shown how roster decisions being made by a corporate board rather than a baseball “family” can bring only inconsistant results at best. My hopes that he would be allowed to emulate the Griffiths and build from within by forging a great farm system slowly unraveled — it became apparent that MacPhail was really a corporate suit rather than a baseball guy, despite his sterling family name. We found out after his firing that it was indeed the Tribune’s board that had final say on Cubs spending decisions, not MacPhail, which may explain why nothing was ever done to improve the farm system. That’s a long-term investment that won’t show up in the profit column and the share price until, well, maybe never. It’s a “deep baseball” way to build a winner – and why bother with that when you can still put fannies in the seats by signing a few big-name free agents, a bunch of middling ones every year, and hire the most famous manager you can find? That’s baseball as show buisness. But history has shown it’s extremely hard to win consistently that way.
It makes me think that maybe MacPhail’s accomplishment of winning two World Series with Twins was a result of him merely steering a ship that was already set in motion by Calvin Griffith and pushed along by Carl Pohlad.
One of the many lessons that the Cubs can learn from the Twins, as well as from two other 2006 playoff-caliber teams, Detroit and Oakland, is that pitching and defense always counts for more than slugging. It amuses me to see how the sports media has anointed the Cubs a playoff contender now that they’ve signed Soriano, because when you look closely at the Cubs, you see that they’ve been built in such a hodge-podge manner that they’re poorly matched for their own home ballpark. Yeah, Soriano may hit 50 homers in Wrigley, but will that help them win when the pitching staff gives them all right back? You’ll never win consistently at a place llke Wrigley with a staff full of fly-ball pitchers and defensive hacks.
The biggest number to remember for the Cubs from this year is this: their pitching staff gave up 125 homers at Wrigley. That was the most home field homers allowed in the entire major leagues. What that shows is that the Cubs don’t have the right kind of pitchers for their own ballpark. Especially in the summer when Wrigley is homer-friendly, the Cubs need groundball pitchers, in other words, pitchers who can hit the low strike zone. That calls for hurlers who rely on sinking fastballs and sliders, and can get that pitch over the plate. They’ve never had many of those, especially with the continued absence of Mark Prior.
Also, in a homer-friendly environment, you need pitchers who don’t give up walks. Guess which club gave up the third-most home field walks in the majors? I don’t see how Soriano is going to help that. The only way the Cubs are going to be a contender for anything is not to just keep adding overpaid bashers to their lineup, but to find ways to pitch effectively at Wrigley. That’s going to take more than Neal Cotts.
Another thing Soriano surely won’t help is the Cubs’ below-average defense. Overall, they were sixth in the National League in number of errors committed with 106. Their fielding percentage was 11th-worst of out 16 N.L. teams. No team that commits that many errors is going to contend for a title. Is it a coincidence that Soriano’s Washington Nationals were the worst-fielding team in the N.L. last year? Soriano, who was forced into the outfield last year against his wishes, committed 11 errors in the field. That was most of any outfielder in the N.L. with the exception of Cincinnati’s Adam Dunn. Let’s face it, Soriano will be a huge defensive liability for a team that already head some very suspect fielding abilities.
The Cubs’ pathetic performance this season completes a collapse that began two years ago after they blew a chance to make the 2004 playoffs by losing seven of eight games down the stretch in late September and early October. When this season ended, there were only four players remaining from that late-2004 squad who really figure into the Cubs’ future: Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Michael Barrett and Carlos Zambrano. In the “maybe” category are Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. Gone are Sammy Sosa, Moises Alou, Corey Patterson, Neifi Perez, Todd Walker, Mark Grudzielanek, Nomar Garciaparra, Greg Maddux, Matt Clement, Kyle Farnsworth, Mike Remlinger and LaTroy Hawkins. Among others. And not to mention Dusty Baker.
Of the team’s four holdover “franchise” players, only Zambrano is a product of the Cubs’ farm system. Wood and Prior were first-round draft picks who passed through the minors so quickly you could hardly credit the Cubs with developing them. (Instead, the Cubs’ seem to have done them more damage than good.)
Compare that to the Twins’ troika of superstars: Santana, Mauer and Morneau each worked their way through the team’s farm system. Other key Twins in the same category include Torii Hunter, Brad Radke, Jason Bartlett and Michael Cuddyer. That means seven of their core “franchise” players were home grown. Another one that got away: David Ortiz. And consider that the added talent that allowed them to win the division – Joe Nathan, Carlos Silva, Nick Punto, Luis Castillo and Liriano – were acquired through canny trades, not free agency. The managing reins have been held by the Tom Kelly-Ron Gardenhire duo since 1986.
How much of more of an abject lesson in the benefits of building from within can there be? Combine the Twins’ experience with the similar tale of the Atlanta Braves, the most consistently winning team of the last decade, and you’ll see a pattern. Look as well to the Oakland A’s, another example of a team that wins consistently – despite losing big-name free agents every year – because it has a consistent philosophy. If you’re not the New York Yankees, you’ll never build a consistent winner through free agency. Instead, build a farm system. Establish a consistent on-field philosophy that fits the quirks of your home ballpark. Develop an organization that breeds loyalty by spotting hidden talent and keeping it, including managers.
Until the Cubs learn how to act like a real baseball franchise instead of a marketing venture or, now, a low-rent version of the Yankees, the Billy Goat curse will live on. It’s the curse of a stubborn animal unable to learn the lessons staring him in the face.
Posted on November 27, 2006