When the Chicago Cubs began remaking their scouting and player advancement infrastructure four-ish years back, generating Craig Breslow was a crucial part of that process. That’s why he ascended so rapidly to the dual function of Assistant GM and VP of Pitching. However what the Cubs required to ensure is that they were building out procedures and institutional knowledge that would long survive any one individual worker’s departure.
Will that hold true in a post-Breslow world? Will the Cubs keep taking the huge steps forward that they did on the pitching side the last few years?
” The reality is, truthfully, Bres is probably not going to take one person to replace all of the important things that he was doing,” Cubs President Jed Hoyer recently informed the Tribune, “so we’ll most likely look for a multiprong approach to change him. He left us in truly good shape. I’m confident that the guys going forward can continue with that facilities and do a great task. There’s no doubt he had a big influence on all of our pitching decisions and because regard he’s always going to be hard to replace.”
In theory, the Cubs now have a number of exceedingly gifted officers in place who can step up to uphold what Breslow was doing– possibly not lose excessive there– and the Cubs likewise have an opportunity to employ from the outside and generate some new point of views. I will not spin Breslow leaving into a favorable, but possibly it can a minimum of be lateral?
The good news is that Breslow’s departure won’t directly sting the Cubs, a minimum of not for a year.
From Andy Martinez at Marquee: “According to sources near to the Cubs front office, Breslow isn’t allowed to take any Cubs front office workers for a year with him to Boston, suggesting the workers and pitching infrastructure will stay intact, simply without Breslow at the top. Other front office members might take higher roles, too, permitting the Cubs to continue to have the structure of a pitching base that Breslow helped build.”
That’s excellent news, since that had actually been a prevalent worry of mine. Now the Cubs have a year not just to do much more institutional work, however also perhaps to figure out promo strategies and brand-new contracts that could make sticking with the Cubs just as attractive as moving over to the Red Sox next fall.
