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As I’ve mentioned before I live in a suburb of Chicago Illinois. Yesterday there was some big news regarding the Chicago Cubs. Theo Epstein the team President of Baseball Operations announced that he’ll be leaving the team with one year left on his contract. Now this didn’t come as a huge surprised as Epstein has mentioned on more than one occasion that he thought 10 years was the perfect amount of time to spend with a team and this would’ve been his 9th season with the Cubs; so he almost hit his number.

Epstein is always going to be remembered in Chicago as the guy who helped break the curse of the Billy goat by assembling the Cubs team that won the 2016 World Series, but I’m not sure the team accomplished as much as it should’ve.

The Cubs where 705-651 in the nine years Epstein was in charge of the team. The Cubs also made five playoff appearances over that time, but they made it to the World Series just the one time and in their last two playoff appearances they haven’t been able to get out of the first round.

With all of the talent the Cubs had it almost seems as though they underachieved in Epstein’s time with the team, but since the Cubs did get that elusive World Series win a lot of this will be forgotten.

Now let’s look at what kind of position Epstein left the Cubs in. Jason Heyward hasn’t performed to what his contract is, but he’s under contract for three more seasons. Yu Darvish had what the Cubs hope was a breakout season in 2020 because he’s also under contract for three more seasons. The last long term deal that Epstein left the Cubs with is Kyle Hendricks contract which has three seasons plus an option year. Of wait I forgot about David Bote who has a very friendly four seasons remaining on his contract plus two option years. The Cubs also have Craig Kimbrell under contract for one more season and he does have an option year, but I don’t know why they’d pick that up with the way he’s performed.

The Cubs picked up Anthony Rizzo’s option year on his contract; so he’ll be a free agent at the end of the 2021 season. Kris Bryant and Kyle Schwarber and Javier Baez are in their final years of arbitration; so they’ll hit the free agent market in 2021. While Willson Contreras has just two years of arbitration left; so he’ll be a free agent following the 2022 season.

Now Epstein didn’t leave the cupboard bare he did leave his successor Jed Hoyer in a position where he’s going to have to make some very tough personnel decisions. With all these contracts coming up the Cubs are going to look drastically different in the next couple of seasons.

Now there hasn’t been giving a reason why Epstein decided to walk away from the Cubs with one year remaining on his contract, but you have to wonder if he didn’t want to have to make these upcoming decisions. It also possible that he understood that the Cubs would never be able to resign all of these players he drafted and he didn’t want to try and rebuild the team again.

Now almost as soon as it was announced that Epstein would be leaving the Cubs he was linked to a new team. It seems like the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets where the first names that came up. The Los Angeles Angels name ended up creeping in later in the conversation, but I’m not sure if any of these teams will be where Epstein lands.

Remember that Epstein built his reputation on rebuilding teams; so you’d have to think that would be the kind of situation he’s looking for, but the way he rebuilt the Cubs and the Bostin Red Sox can no longer be done because of the rule changes Major League Baseball has made. This makes you wonder if Epstein does end up signing on with a new team and it does seem like that will happen will he have adjusted his rebuilding strategy. I’m honestly not sure if he’ll be successful with his next team.

Where do you think Epstein’s next landing spot is?

Did you know that the NBA Draft is tonight? Well it is and the Minnesota Timberwolves have the #1 pick?

What I’m interested to know from you is who do you think the Timberwolves will take with that pick? It seems like the name most associated with Minnesota’s pick is Anthony Edwards the guard from Georgia, but there are a couple of names that might sneak into that pick.

If the Timberwolves decide they want a young big man they could go with James Wiseman who played a few games for the University of Memphis before being rules ineligible. Then don’t forget that the youngest of the Ball brothers LaMelo is in this draft and should be selected pretty early and has a shot at being the first player drafted.

Edwards, Wiseman and Ball appear to be the top three players in this draft; so which one will Minnesota take? Also what order do you have these three being drafted in? If you don’t have them going 1,2,3 let me know where you see them being picked.

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