End-of-season conversations that ought to take place between the Chicago Cubs front office and several of the team’s players
Do Major League Baseball teams de-brief their players at season’s end?
Do the teams’ GMs and other ranking executives sit down, one-on-one, with the players and assess the player’s standing? Do they discuss the successes and failures of the previous season? Do they lay out expectations going forward?
Do they, in short, conduct formal performance evaluations?
Probably not, given the players’ understandable desires to beat feet following the recording of the season’s final out. Still, that ought to be done. Players need to be told, candidly and by management, how well they measured up to team projections and what they could work on over the winter in order to improve.
Several members of the 2018 Chicago Cubs would benefit from such a sit-down with team President Theo Epstein and GM Jed Hoyer. These typically are players who either have greatly exceeded, or fallen substantially short, of pre-season projections. It may also include players whose progress suggests a new role, or who may have displayed narrow shortcomings which, if worked on, could flesh out an otherwise satisfactory portfolio.
This article imagines how such face-to-face analyses might transpire, at least from the perspective of team President Theo Epstein and GM Jed Hoyer. It does not attempt to speculate on player response, nor does it speak in political tones that might be applied were such a de-briefing to actually be conducted. Our imagined de-briefings are candid.
In each case, the end-goal is to improve the Cubs overall. But that also means the end-goal most certainly is not to paper over concerns. In our de-briefings, the assumption is always made that the player wants to hear, and can handle, the unvarnished truth.