Cubs' Theo Epstein has winning game plan

CHICAGO - It's not always going to be an oil painting. That's the line Joe Maddon has used since his hire as manager of the Chicago Cubs last October, before the wintry weather made a mess of bleacher reconstruction and various other planned upgrades for 101-year-old Wrigley Field.

She's a mess right now, the old girl, with fans forced to use Porta-Pottys and such, but the browned ivy on the walls is beginning to come to life again and with a little imagination, you can see where it's all headed. If all goes as planned, the familiar oil painting that is this place will be whole again by the All-Star break - only newer, cleaner and more functional.

As for the product on the field, that too, is still an incomplete canvas, but again the artist's intent is now clear to see. The talent accrued over the previous three seasons as the Cubs traded away established players for prospects and took their beatings has begun to arrive and, at 13-11 entering last night's game with the Cardinals, the Cubs are no longer anyone's easy out.

"It's really exciting to be a Cub right now," Maddon, the former Rays' skipper, was saying before a recent game. "I do see a tremendous future around here, no question. The people who put this together have done a wonderful job of picking the pieces."

After two world championships in Boston and one notorious chicken-and-beer fueled collapse, Theo Epstein left the Red Sox in late autumn of 2011 to become the Cubs' president of baseball operations.

His charge was almost identical to the one he was hired for in Boston: Deliver a championship to an organization with a hex over its collective head, this one from a stubborn old goat.

To do this, though, Epstein and his front office scrapped the blueprint used on Yawkey Way for one that better fit the Cubs circumstances.

"The Phillies," he said. "They built what really is the envy of every organization. Which is a sustained run of success."

Epstein arrived in Boston in 2002 with what he called "A Hall-of-Fame caliber core." Truth is he acquired some big pieces in players like David Ortiz, Curt Schilling and Kevin Millar, but there was little help back then from a farm system that had been picked over as they tried to keep pace with the Yankees, and that 2004 championship team that broke the Babe's curse started just two homegrown stars, Trot Nixon and and Kevin Youkilis

By the time Boston won again, in 2007, that number had ballooned to a dozen. "That first championship bought us time to rebuild the farm system," Epstein said.

"That's one of the advantages we had when we came in here. It was obvious. There was a mandate. No one with a straight face could say we had a chance to win the World Series in 2012 or 2013. And we had ownership that was fully on board. Our owner is extremely patient, he gets the big picture and he supported us throughout that process."

Thomas Ricketts, son of TD Ameritrade founder J. Joseph Ricketts, is 51 years old and looks 10 years younger. He has made no secret of his desire to emulate the success of the Red Sox and to turn the area around Wrigley into an even more theme-park atmosphere than it currently is, even if it takes years.

So Epstein came to Chicago practically guaranteeing a gestation period of bad baseball. "Which can be a really uncomfortable process in a big market," he said. "The other thing we learned from it was that being transparent with what you're doing is a good thing. We were open with the fans that we were really focusing on young talent acquisition - sometime at the expense of the big-league team. And that I think that bought us a little bit of goodwill with them where they were more open to it and more patient and following along."

Goodwill with the fans is one thing. Playing in such an environment is fraught with risk. Players can become selfish, disinterested and above all, disruptive. Cubs All-Star first baseman Anthony Rizzo may still be only 25, but he's already been a part of three seasons of 90 losses or more.

"It's not fun losing," he said. "Ever. But you just have to come to work every day and play baseball and do the things that help out and never lose sight of the big picture.

"You teach yourself: Take it day-by-day. And you know what? Even though we're winning more now, we still have to take it day-by-day."

When the Phillies won the World Series in 2008, the Cubs' 97-64 record was the National League's best. Lou Piniella was their manager, their payroll was among the major league's highest, but with the exception of rookie of the year Geovany Soto, they were a construction of grizzled veterans - not unlike the 1993 version of the Phillies.

Like that crew, their demise was swift, finishing a distant second the year after and fifth the season after that. In each of the four seasons since, the Cubs have lost at least 89 games and as many as 101 - Theo's first season as team president in 2012.

He didn't go out to intentionally lose over 100 games that first year, but he didn't exactly put his best foot forward not to, either. He traded two of his starting pitchers for prospects that season, traded two more in 2013 for more prospects, and - in a blockbuster deal that netted two former first-round picks last summer - traded his top two arms, Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel, to Oakland.

Epstein went hard after position players with almost every big draft pick and big deal, a strategy that fueled the Phillies rise as well. "When you rebuild around pitching and you bring in a bunch of young arms, it's hard to plan around it," he said. "Because the Tommy Johns pop up and pitchers fall - there's so much attrition that even two or three years down the line . . .

"It's not like with position players every one of them works out. But you have a little bit more certainty."

Four of the first five hitters in the Cubs' lineup are 25 years old or younger, including rookie cleanup hitter Kris Bryant, the slugging third baseman whom the Cubs made the second pick overall in 2013. Last Friday, rookie second baseman Addison Russell, one of the first-round picks obtained in last summer's big trade, hit his first major league home run, providing the margin of victory in a 1-0 defeat of Milwaukee.

It has also created a pitching void that Epstein only partially filled in the offseason by reclaiming Hammel with a 3-year, $30 million free-agent deal, and signing coveted free-agent lefty Jon Lester in the offseason.

"But I don't think it's possible to cover all of your bases," Epstein said, and so the Cubs often resemble those pre-championship Phillies teams that habitually won and lost games in which they scored nine runs, as Chicago did Monday in a 10-9 loss to the Cardinals - squandering a five-run lead.

"They are the best in the division," Maddon said afterward. "But we can play with these guys. And I'm not talking three years from now."

"It feels like a beginning," Epstein had said a few days before. "Now we're competing, and we're a good team and we have a chance to do some damage this year.

"But what's nice about it, and why I say it feels like a beginning, is that this group of players is going to be together until 2020, 2021. Our young players who just came up are under control until 2021. Rizzo and [Starlin] Castro are on long-term deals and we have options for 2020, 2021. We're one of the youngest teams in the league. So I like where we are now but it's really exciting to think of where we can be as we continue to go forward."

And the Phillies?

The role models?

"They know what it looks like and will get back there," he said. "It just takes a little bit of time to restock the talent level in the organization."