Archive for January, 2009
Del Negro dismayed?
K.C. Johnson’s team insiders say Vinny Del Negro was taken aback and dismayed by Jerry Reinsdorf’s comments, regarding the Bulls and how they were being coached.
“Managing expectations is the hardest thing in this business,” Del Negro said. “They didn’t win 60 games last year. They didn’t have a rookie point guard. They didn’t have the injuries we’ve had.”
Asked how he would classify his working relationship with general manager John Paxson and Reinsdorf, Del Negro said: “Great. No problems. Very open. Very professional. Totally fine.”
Del Negro chalked Reinsdorf’s strong comments up to competitiveness.
“That’s just Jerry trying to motivate and get guys going,” Del Negro said. “Jerry wants to win just like every owner and every coach. It’s not easy. … Some people are more patient than others.
“Jerry is a great owner. He lets you go do your job. We’ll talk once in a while. We’ll text once in a while. Frustration builds for him just like everybody else. So I focus on what I can control and that’s making this team better. And I feel we are.”
Several team insiders classified Del Negro as taken aback and dismayed by Reinsdorf’s comments.
In his interview with hosts Mike North and Dan Jiggetts, Reinsdorf strongly supported Paxson. Asked, then, if the players are not being coached, Reinsdorf said this:
“I have a lot of thoughts about that, but they’re not thoughts that I really can say publicly. All I know is what we have right now is not good and we have to get better. They are playing hard in the last half-dozen or so games. We had some games where they were mailing it in and I felt like standing up and booing with everybody else. They’re not mailing it in anymore.”
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Reinsdorf on Bulls: This has been a disaster, It’s embarrassing
During a Friday morning interview on Comcast SportsNet’s “Monsters in the Morning,” Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf gave John Paxson his full support, Vinny Del Negro, not so much. Reinsdorf also points to the Bulls low-post deficiencies.
North: “Where would you rate this season?”
JR: “You want the grade up ’til today? What’s the lowest grade you can give? This has been a disaster. It’s embarrassing. But it will get better.”
North: “With the same people?”
JR: “Well, we’ll see. John Paxson is not going to let this situation continue.”
Dan Jiggetts: “How comfortable are you with John at the helm?”
JR: “When you have a team that’s not performing it’s an organization failure. You win and you lose as an organization. But if there’s one person that is not responsible for what’s going on right now, it’s John Paxson. I have tremendous confidence in John Paxson. He’s really one of the best people that I know. He’s a great general manager and a great judge of talent. I just worry that he not be too hard on himself. He takes all of this very, very seriously.”
North: “To say that he’s not at all responsible… he brought in the players. So are the players not being coached up?”
JR: “I have a lot of thoughts about that but they’re not thoughts that I really can say publicly. All I know is what we have right now is not good and we have to get it better. They are playing hard in the last half-dozen or so games. We had some games where…”
North: “You knew they were mailing it in.”
JR: “They were mailing it in and I felt like standing up and booing along with everybody else. They’re not mailing it in anymore.”
Also from JR: “We have a great player in Derrick Rose. When I first got involved with the Bulls, we had one great player ( Michael Jordan). When we won our first championship, he was the only player left from the original team. We will build around Derrick Rose. Every player that’s added to this team will be a player who can feed off of him… This is not going to take changing 11 players. We do have some pretty good players on this club. Obviously what we lack is an inside presence. That’s the biggest thing we are missing and somehow we have to find it.”
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Cubs like Nomar?
Bruce Levine says the Cubs entertained the idea of Nomar Garciaparra returning to fill a spot on the bench. Nomar would back up at first and third base, however his people say he is looking for more playing time, that situation may not be offered to him.
The Cubs are still looking for a right-handed hitting infielder/1B-3B backup. Names that have come up for the Cubs are Kevin Millar and Rich Aurilia. The team had shown early interest in Nomar Garciaparra, but were told that he was looking for more of a full-time position. The team also inquired about the availability of former White Sox SS Juan Uribe before he signed a deal with the San Francisco Giants.
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Hester: Mojo will be back
Devin Hester says he got away from the basics that made him a great return man, including a higher power. Hester also says it took some time, but he and Kyle Orton started to develop something.
“I really don’t know [what they're going to do at receiver],” Hester said. “We’re probably in the process of rebuilding, you can see from the coaching changes and everything we’re trying to turn the organization around. Whatever they’re doing, it’s for the good of the team. It’s putting the pieces together and getting it going.
“The timing with Kyle, it started getting good. I hated that it took until the last couple games of the season but sometimes that’s what happens. When you have patience, good things will happen.”
“Oh yeah, I expect to get my mojo back,” Hester said. “I kind of found myself, at the end of the day, trying to please everybody and putting the man up above beside. That’s what I regret. I fell away from giving God glory and that’s on me. This year, I’m not out to please human beings, I’m out to please God. That’s who gave me my God-given talents and it’s a whole new mentality for me moving forward.”
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Williams: Sox have no money
Kenny Williams talks to CBS Sports.com and comments about the fiscal responsibility he has to operate under. He also says the current Sox youth movement is an extension of the last three years.
Williams isn’t begging, but it’s becoming pretty obvious that his pockets aren’t stuffed with cash, either. The White Sox lopped off more than $30 million in 2008 salaries by trading Nick Swisher and Javier Vazquez and allowing Orlando Cabrera and Joe Crede to leave as free agents, and they’ve spent very little of that on new acquisitions for 2009.
Spring training is two weeks away, and the White Sox have 25-year-old Chris Getz as their second baseman and 26-year-old Josh Fields at third. They have 27-year-old Alexei Ramirez at shortstop and could well have 25-year-old Clayton Richard in their rotation.
“It’s nothing we haven’t done for the last three years,” Williams said, pointing to the additions of Ramirez, John Danks and Gavin Floyd in previous winters. “It’s just that now people are noticing. We set out three years ago, saying that if we weren’t mindful, we could become an aging ballclub very quickly, and fall off the map.
“All that’s happened this year is a continuation of that. Maybe people just missed it, because we never called it a rebuild.”
What’s hard to know is how much Williams’ winter strategy would have changed without the economic pressures.
Williams didn’t say it, but other Sox officials said that owner Jerry Reinsdorf presented a bleak economic picture. Reinsdorf told his staff that this year would be tough, and that 2010 could be worse.
Williams will say that he’s not sure he’ll have the freedom to add payroll this summer, even with the salaries the Sox dropped over the winter.
“We have to be cautious, if for no other reason than so we don’t have to play all day games because we can’t afford the electricity,” he said. “This is such a volatile time, and people are going to look at their discretionary spending.”
The budget concerns were apparently one reason the White Sox haven’t pursued a trade for Brian Roberts, the Orioles second baseman who is due to make $8 million this year and is eligible for free agency after the season. While Roberts could slot in easily at second and as a leadoff hitter, Williams insists he hasn’t had any trade talks with the O’s since November.
But the budget is only part of it. Williams and the Sox are serious about the youth movement, and they love the idea of going with Getz and Ramirez as a double-play combination that could stay together for a long time.
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Orioles not done shopping at Cub-mart
Baltimore Sun says the Orioles would like to add Rich Hill to their collection of ex-Cubs. Hill could be reunited with his former pitching coach Rick Kranitz. Hill is out of options.
The Orioles and Chicago Cubs are again involved in trade talks, this time about the Cubs’ left-handed starter Rich Hill. According to industry sources, the two teams have had ongoing talks about Hill, a one-time top pitching prospect who is struggling to regain his command.
One industry source said it’s a “strong possibility” that Hill will wind up with the Orioles, perhaps as early as next week. The Orioles will likely give up a player to be named who could be contingent on Hill’s success in Baltimore.
“We are talking to them,” Orioles club president Andy MacPhail said about the Cubs. “We are talking to a lot of teams about a lot of players.”
The Cubs have spoken to several teams about Hill, including the Seattle Mariners, but a source said the Orioles are in the lead to land the lefty. The Orioles would have to shuffle their 40-man roster, which is currently full.
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Source: Dye still expects trade
A source close to Jermaine Dye tells Chi-ball.com the right fielder still expects to be traded, but wants to stay on the south side. Kenny Williams talks about the subject with the Trib’s Mark Gonzales.
Williams said he told right fielder Jermaine Dye, 35, that it was unlikely he would be traded.
“But can I ever give someone 100 percent assurance?” Williams said. “I think as soon as I said that, the players and you would know we would be lying by the way we operate around here.”
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Williams likes Sox chances, and Cubs?
Kenny Williams likes his clubs chances to win the Central this year, and thought they would win last year. Williams also says the Cubs and Yankees are the best on paper in their leagues.
The odd thing about Williams is he seems more confident in his team’s future now than at any other time during his eight years as GM.
”I felt like we were going to win it last year,” Williams said of an American League Central that looked to be dominated by the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians at this time last year. ”I’ll tell you if I feel like we are overmatched in the division. I think we can win it [in 2009].”
Big talk for a GM whose rotation is spotty, whose leadoff hitter has yet to be named and whose infield will feature new names at third base, shortstop and second base. Oh, and did we mention the Sox have slashed their payroll?
”The best team on paper in the American League is the New York Yankees,” Williams said Wednesday during a pre-SoxFest chat with reporters. ”The Cubs are the best team on paper in the National League. I’m not afraid to say that. Some of our fans might not like that, but it is what is.”
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De Paul AD Ponsetto: It’s a process
Lindsey Willhite has a lengthy post regarding DePaul AD Jean Lenti Ponsetto’s comments regarding Jerry Wainwright and the program. She compares the DePaul program in relation to comparable Marquette and Notre Dame.
“We’ve made all those right kinds of moves. But just because you make them, it doesn’t mean you’re going to reap the benefit of them instantaneously. It’s a process. Again, I’ll point to Doug Bruno or Bill Carmody in his circumstance, because I’m really happy for him because I like Bill, I think he’s a good guy and I think he’s done a nice job with his program. He’s tried to win the right way and recruit kids who could go to Northwestern and be successfully athletically and academically.
“That’s certainly DePaul’s theme. That’s what we’re trying to do, be successful athletically and academically. But it takes time. You don’t get to put kids on waivers and you don’t just boot ‘em off the team if their potential is not what you thought it was going to be. We’re an educational process, an educational entity. That, sometimes, is really frustrating for our fans to understand. There have been occasions when people have said to me, in their frustration, they don’t care if they go to school and they don’t care if they graduate. Well, that’s not what we’re in the business of.
“At the same time, looking at him and wanting him to be successful, DePaul has also made this transition into the Big East. And, as I said, it’s a process. You could point to other programs who’ve certainly had success that are like us that people want to compare us to.
“Marquette had the benefit of having the same coach in that situation who’d taken a team to the Final Four — and I give Tom Crean a lot of credit for having done that and having made the transition into the Big East. But they were able to do that with the same coaching staff.
“I tell people all the time: I love Mike Brey. I think he’s one of the all-time great guys in the business and a really good coach in our league. But, you know, it was just a few short years ago, Jerry’s first year in the league and our first year in the Big East, Mike had been at Notre Dame for a few years, we’re duking it out with Notre Dame for the 12th spot in the Big East tournament.
“But what changed for Mike Brey? Mike Brey didn’t become any better of a coach. What changed for him is Luke Harangody. I think Mike would tell you that. Give him credit. He did a great job in recruiting a great talent in Luke Harangody. But the fact of the matter is, three years ago, he had been in the Big East a number of years, we’re down there fighting it out for who’s going to get the 12th spot. But it was Jerry’s first year and Mike’s fourth or fifth year (editor’s note: actually his sixth year). Like I said, I think those are the kinds of circumstances and situations that folks have a short memory about.
“I think they also have a short memory about we beat Connecticut here. And we’ve beaten Syracuse. And we’ve beaten some of the other good programs that are in the conference. So it’s not like DePaul doesn’t know how to do that. But it is a process and it is about being able to retain a really highly talented pool of kids.”
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Levine: Cubs not done
Bruce Levine’s latest has the Cubs looking at filling out their bench with Paul Bako and possibly former White Sox Juan Uribe, dealing Rich Hill, and back up plans to Jake Peavy.
The Cubs are still trying to open a roster spot for catcher Paul Bako. Once the 40-man roster has an opening, it’s assumed that Bako will sign a one-year contract for $750,000.
The Cubs have also been weighing offers for left-handed pitcher Rich Hill. Hill, who has the yips (continually walks batters), tried to correct his problem with a stint in winter ball this season. After a couple of encouraging starts, Hill went back to walking a batter per inning.
The Cubs are still looking at other free-agent starting pitchers. Former Cardinal Braden Looper and left-hander Randy Wolf are still on their want list if they aren’t able to revisit the Jake Peavy deal with the Padres.
The Cubs are looking for a 25th man/right-handed hitter off the bench. Former Sox shortstop Juan Uribe is someone they’ve been taking a look at over the last couple of weeks. Although Uribe doesn’t give the Cubs a back-up at first base off the bench, he does give them gold glove-like defense at 2B, SS and 3B in case one of the Cubs’ starters goes down with a lengthy injury.
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Cubs aquire Heilman
UPDATE: ESPN is reporting the deal is done.
The Chicago Cubs have acquired pitcher Aaron Heilman from the Seattle Mariners for infielder Ronny Cedeno and pitcher Garrett Olson, a baseball source told ESPN.com.
Cubs general manager Jim Hendry, who was returning from a trip to Italy on Wednesday, couldn’t be reached for comment. But one baseball person said Hendry has been an admirer of Heilman’s “since he pitched at Notre Dame.” Olson had been mentioned as a potential trade chip if the Cubs decided to make another run at San Diego’s Jake Peavy. The Cubs’ deal with Seattle could put an end to speculation about the team trying to acquire Peavy.
ESPNam1000’s Bruce Levine reports the Cubs are closing in on aquiring Seattle reliever Aaron Heilman. Heilman, a former Notre Dame star and NewYork Met, has long been a target of Jim Hendry. Heilman would help set up Carlos Marmol along with Kevin Gregg.
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Bad trip=Pink slip?
Could a rough road trip be the end of the line for Vinny Del Negro? Roman Modrowski wonders himself.
I still don’t think Del Negro will be fired this season. But if the Bulls completely collapse and let this losing streak reach double digits, which could happen, an inertia can be created that would effectively force John Paxson to make a move. There are times when things go so bad that a GM will make a move just to make a move.
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