For Ed Lynch, the beginning of the end came on Mother’s Day–after the mother of all heartbreaking defeats.
After watching his team blow leads of 7-4, 11-9 and 15-13 in Montreal, Lynch agonized on the team flight back to Chicago. Then he suffered a sleepless night, wondering how 5 1/2 years of sweat and toil could have produced such a miserable team.
“It was the most frustrating point of my career,” Lynch said.
Two days after the Cubs returned to Chicago, Lynch approached President Andy MacPhail and offered to step aside.
“He said, `I feel responsible,'” MacPhail recalled. “He said, `I want you to know I’m not quitting and not running out on you, but if you feel like you have to make a change, I would never do anything to embarrass you or the club.'”
MacPhail’s response?
“It’s way too early for this,” he said. “Let’s wait and see.”
The waiting game ended Wednesday when MacPhail relieved Lynch of his duties and reassigned him to an unspecified role that will include scouting, talent evaluating and some contract work. Lynch, who spent the last five days house-hunting in Arizona, will move to Scottsdale next month.
MacPhail, 47, will assume the dual responsibilities of president and general manager. After leading Minnesota to two World Series titles during his eight years as GM of the Twins, MacPhail is ready for the ultimate challenge–turning around the one of the losingest franchises in professional sports.
“Either I’m going to get it or it’s going to kill me,” MacPhail said. “Hopefully we’re not presiding over a funeral in a few years.”
MacPhail indicated Lynch would have been replaced even if he had not offered his resignation in May.
“I reached the conclusion that at the end of the season, I probably would make a change and I felt I owed it to Ed to make it as soon as I had come to that determination,” MacPhail said. “The sooner the better.”
Just the same, Lynch did not want to go through the torture of what he called a “death watch” over the final two months of the season.
“I didn’t want to put Andy through a messy situation where he had to fire me,” Lynch said. “And I didn’t want to put myself and my family through that. I didn’t want to have it be a: `Call this number to vote fire [him] or call this number to vote no.’
“Discretion is a better part of valor after a point. You can go down kicking and screaming and not quit, but you’d have to take a lot of people down with you.”
After firing manager Jim Riggleman and most of his staff after the 1999 season, Lynch said it would be “hypocritical” of him not to take responsibility for the Cubs’ sinking ship that plummeted to a 74-125 record since June 8, 1999.
“It was an equal opportunity failure,” Lynch said of his team’s struggles this year. “When we started off, our bullpen was terrible. Then our bullpen got good and our offense was bad. It’s been across the board. We’ve had problems at every facet of our game.
“Our plan going into the winter meetings was to go out and get a shortstop, a second baseman, a center-fielder, a catcher and a starting pitcher. We went out and we did exactly that and we’re still 14, 15 games under .500. So the plan that I had failed.”
With that point, Lynch addressed the reason why his five-plus year tenure as general manager was so maddening.
Lynch acquired good players in shortstop Ricky Gutierrez, second baseman Eric Young, center-fielder Damon Buford and catcher Joe Girardi. Starter Ismael Valdes had been good, posting a career 3.38 ERA, before the Cubs obtained him.
But despite all the promising moves, the Cubs were out of the playoff race in May.
“If you evaluate all the trades individually,” MacPhail said, “with maybe one exception, they were all either favorable or at least neutral. The frustrating part was that he never seemed to get rewarded for plugging individual holes.”
At least he was rewarded with a new post in the organization. Lynch, whose contract ran through 2001, technically signed a two-year contract extension with his 2001 salary being divided over the next three years.
MacPhail plans to use him to boost the organization’s major league scouting. Lynch also is to advise MacPhail on potential deals as the July 31 trading deadline approaches.
MacPhail said he will sit down with manager Don Baylor and his coaching staff “before the week is out” to evaluate each player on the roster. Then he’ll hit the phones and try to pry young talent loose from other general managers.
Trading Sammy Sosa remains a remote possibility. Moving players such as Henry Rodriguez, Glenallen Hill, Jeff Reed and Valdes is far more likely.
“Sometimes a little activity is a good thing for the sake of a little activity,” MacPhail said. “Given the record that we have, this would be one of those times.”
Lynch made a plethora of moves during his tenure. While some fans will slam him for giving up potential ace Jon Garland to the White Sox for failed reliever Matt Karchner, the good trades far outweighed the bad ones.
Among those he acquired in lopsided deals were starter Jon Lieber, Rodriguez, Buford and Young.
“He made some trades, he knows, that I was enthusiastic about and some that I was less enthusiastic about,” MacPhail said. “There was one [the Felix Heredia deal] where I just closed my office door and said, `God, and I can’t believe we’re doing this.’
“But he was the general manager and I had respect for that. That person ought to be allowed to make his own decisions.”
Now that person will be MacPhail.
