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The Cubs Way by Tom Verducci

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The Cubs Way by Tom Verducci The Cubs Way By Tom Verducci -Theo Epstein: “I hate it when people blame their environment because especially in a leadership position, you’re responsible for how you react to your environment and how you change your environment and being a positive force to change it for the better if you think something is toxic. I wouldn’t blame anyone else for it or anyone else. -Joe Maddon on Kyle Schwarber: “He is what we want to be. How he prioritizes winning, how he cares about his teammates, how hard he plays, how much he loves the game, and how much he wants to win.” -Theo Epstein on Schwarber: “He’s a heartbeat guy.” -Theo Epstein: “I want to construct a scouting and player development machine. We are going to have the resourcefulness of a small market team and the resources of a big market team.” -On the role of character in Theo’s plan: “Then Epstein told them about one of the strongest pillars in his rebuilding plan: He wanted players with strong character. ‘We aren’t going to compromise character for talent. We’re the Cubs. We’re going to have both talent and character.” The idea of so strongly emphasizing character may have struck some as odd, especially coming from a Bill James disciple who built two World Series championships in Boston as an early adopter of analytics. Numbers had been his preeminent guiding principle.” -On the need to change their scouting processes from their days in Boston: “The landscape was flat now. There were so many smart people working for teams. Thinking back to the energy in that room in Boston when we could go after the Millar’s, the Mueller’s, the Guillen’s, and the Hafner’s, it was so different now. It was really great all of us were here in Chicago, but we knew we couldn’t fall back on the way we used to do it. We had to keep evolving. We realized this was going to be really different.” -On the importance of information in scouting: “The currency in the draft is information. The currency in the draft isn’t ‘I’m a little bit better scout than you.’ -On Theo’s 2012 organization meeting in Mesa, Arizona: “Epstein devoted day 1 to pitching philosophy. He devoted the second day to hitting philosophy. He devoted the third to defense and base-running. The last day was devoted to character. The Cubs, Epstein insisted, would acquire only players with outstanding makeup. Even Epstein realized himself how far he had evolved since he put so much faith in numbers when he began as General Manager with the Red Sox. Now character did not just matter, it was essential to Epstein’s blueprint to win the World Series. -Epstein on the role of character: “I used to scoff at it in Boston. I just felt that we were going to win by getting guys who got on base more than the other team and by getting pitchers who miss bats and get ground balls. Talent wins. But every year I did the job, I developed a greater appreciation for how much the human element matters and how much more you can achieve when you have players who care about winning, care about each other, develop those relationships, have those conversations. It creates an environment where the sum is greater than the parts.” -Epstein on how character became so important: “It was a lot of things. It was living through the Nomar trade and how we played in the aftermath of that…the lesson was that character in the clubhouse mattered – especially in a major market where negative issues get amplified. -Epstein on the role the draft played for the Cubs: “The key to building a winning culture started in the draft room. That’s the one time all year where you decide proactively, affirmatively what type of person, what kind of human being you want to bring into your organization. The entire universe is out there and you choose one of them. Whether you admit it or not, you’re kind of saying, ‘This is what I want my organization to be. This is what I want my organization to be about. This is a Cub.’ Every time you pick, especially in the first round, that’s what you’re saying.” -On how Epstein has improved as a General Manager: “Epstein made a bet on the importance of the players he acquired. It wasn’t to replace the edge in analytics, but to enhance it. He made this best as baseball front offices were more resembling technology companies with employees boasting degrees from some of the country’s best universities.” -On the Cubs emphasizing hitting over pitching: “Prioritizing pitching over hitting was considered the safer route, but Epstein decided to zig while everyone else zagged. Pitching, he decided, was something he would worry about later. Most important to him was establishing what it meant to be a Cub and the ones who could most determine the culture of a team are the ones who play every day, not the ones who pitch every 5th or 6th day. Epstein believed that starting pitchers, at best, become leaders of the rotation once they get established, but not leaders of an entire team. ‘There’s a lot of reasons why we went hitters over pitchers in the early rounds, but that was a big one,” Epstein said. ‘We were going to define our identity and we’re going to define it through our best players. We’re going to define it through our young nucleus so we want character too. We want players who are invested in their teammates. We want players we can trust to respond to adversity. We want players that other players like being around. We want guys that care about winning and prioritize it. We want guys that are 0-4 and are happy because we won and are pissed coming off a loss even if they went 3-4.” -On the Cubs’ emphasis on character: “The brilliance of what the Cubs did was to put their faith not just in numbers, but also in the type of people they acquired. The four pillars of the rebuild (Rizzo, Bryant, Schwarber and Russell) all were acquired because the Cubs valued their character, not just their skill.” -On the front office’s search for the next competitive advantage: “They never stopped searching for finding edges, but they made a fundamental decision early in their time in Chicago that the one edge that they could exploit was found in a very old school resource: people. Said Epstein, ‘Interestingly during the push for the next competitive advantage and how flat everything has gotten and how smart everyone is and how everyone is using the same technology, I feel like I’ve pushed our organization back to the human being and thankfully so. If we can’t find the technological breakthrough, maybe we could be better with how we treat our players and connect with players and the relationships we develop and how we put them in positions to succeed. Maybe our environment will be the best in the game. Maybe our vibe will be the best in the game. Maybe our players will be loosest. Maybe they’ll have the most fun. Maybe they’ll care the most. It’s impossible to quantify. When people do things that they weren’t even sure they were capable of, I think it comes back to connection. Connection with teammates, connection with the organization. Feeling like they belong in an organization.” -Epstein on the end of his time in Boston: “For the first time, Epstein started picturing himself out of Boston and also started to think about what was important to him from an organization.” -On the Cubs Way: “We’re going to meet and get it all out there on the table. We’ll decide what we believe about baseball – all of our collective wisdom about baseball. We’re going to come up with the Cubs Way. How we want to play the game, how we’re going to teach the game, the kind of people we want, and what we’re going to stand for in the organization.” -The core principles the organization would be built: 1. We will treat the development of every player as if he were making a personal investment in him 2. We will stay objective in evaluating the player’s strengths and weaknesses in order to devise the most precise and thorough individual player development plan. 3. We will continually challenge ourselves to better communicate our method of teaching 4. We will put the organization’s goals ahead of our personal ambitions. 5. We will embrace the cultures and backgrounds of all our players as we recognize the growth we can achieve as an organization from this experience 6. At all times we will keep this in mind: Our mission is to help the Chicago Cubs win a World Series -Maddon will write certain things on his lineup card every day: • Be Present, Not Perfect • Z Irreverent (honoring Don Zimmer’s exhortations for Maddon not to take himself too seriously and to take chances when he’s managing a game – from when the two worked together in Tampa) • DNBAFF (Do Not Be A Fucking Fan – a reminder that his job in the dugout was to take the emotion of out of his decisions) • Process • Positive + Optimistic • Reminders of deceased family members -From the Player Development Manual: “The Cubs attitude is positive, powerful, action-oriented and resilient.
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