4:00pm: The Yankees announced that they have hired Hendry as a special assignment scout.
11:57am: The Yankees have hired former Cubs GM Jim Hendry as a special assistant, ESPNChicago.com's Bruce Levine reports. The Cubs dismissed Hendry in August, before hiring Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer.
The Cubs won three division titles under Hendry (2003, '07, '08), but finished 71-91 in 2011 despite an Opening Day payroll of roughly $134MM. Overall, Chicago posted a 749-748 record under Hendry from 2002-11. MLBTR's Transaction Tracker details his moves, from the $91.5MM extension for Carlos Zambrano to his bargain signing of Kerry Wood last offseason.
Current D'Backs GM Kevin Towers worked for the Yankees after his tenure in San Diego ended, so this isn't the first time Brian Cashman has asked a former counterpart to join his baseball operations team. Hendry obtained a multiyear deal from the Yankees.
Bat boys are getting older, it seems.
The great thing about bat boys is I keep getting older while they stay the same age amiright?
In Gooderson We Trust
Congrats to Jim on the new gig, well deserved.
uhh, how exactly does he deserve this?
I agree with Lefty.
– A. Soriano
Wooosh
Haaaaaa!
maybe this is boston’s compensation?
sarcasm of course, as long as he doesn’t handle contracts, or trades, should be fine
As a Cubs fan, I’m not a Jim Hendry fan, and he sealed his fate as soon as he signed Milton Bradley.
But would you care to back up his trade failures? Because it’d have to be a lot to outweigh his best deals, most notably Jose Hernandez for Kenny Lofton and Aramis Ramirez. Like I said, I’m no Hendry fan, but he almost always came out ahead on trades. Go back through his transaction history, and you’ll see that.
Hendry never had much to trade with. He had a brutal track record with the Rule 4 draft, so lack of prospects for pretty much his entire rein and then the poor FA sings really sealed his legacy as a GM. The few trades are just not enough to give him much of a boost.
Oh, overall, for sure, he deserved to lose his job. I just don’t think he’s as laughably bad as some have made out. If anything, his refusal to embrace new statistics and modernize the Cubs front office and scouting were worse offenses than any roster moves he made. He never had ownership committed to the draft and building the farm system, until this past year, and they drafted fairly well and signed almost all the picks.
But he did make good trades, and other than maybe the salary dump trade of Ted Lilly to the Dodgers. Really, he never, ever traded prospects and came out on the wrong end of the deal. Maybe the John Koronka for Freddie Bynum trade, I guess. Or Nolasco for Juan Pierre. But other than those (and the Garza deal, and although the jury is still out it’s hard to see it looking too bad for the Cubs in the end) he really didn’t lose trades. (And he fleeced some people, as I noted. Along with the Ramirez trade, the Choi for Derrek Lee deal was hugely one-sided for the Cubs.) And he did make a few very astute moves in free agency. (Ted Lilly and Mark DeRosa were very, very good deals for the Cubs; they were both 6.4 WAR players over 2007/2008, and their deals were very reasonable.) Now, he obviously made some blunders in free agency, and like you said, he left the farm system barren of impact talent. (He was also guilty of overvaluing his own prospects…there was an anonymous Cubs front office quote from a few years back, saying they “Wouldn’t trade Pie for DiMaggio”. That speaks for itself.)
But I don’t think he deserves the reputation of complete incompetence that he’s apparently garnered. I actually think he could be valuable to the Yankees in this role. It was just time for him to move on from the Cubs.
Rumor has it, the reason the Yankees haven’t been spending much money this off season is because they wanted to hire Hendry and that, if hired, Hendry wanted to get to work on a 20 year, $400 million dollar contract extension for Derek Jeter with a full no trade clause….
To be fair, giving old players undeserved contracts was never Hendry’s thing.
What he was known for was going out into the market, failing to get the number 1-3 guys, then giving the #4 guy #1 money, even if he was only bidding against himself to do it.
Almost believed you…
Next time say you heard it from a “baseball executive”.
Well Yanks fans, you guys had a good run.
Hendry will be the whispering voice inside Cashman’s head:
“Give him the no-trade clause. Do it. You know you want to…”
lol he better not have any actual influence on decisions.
It was ugly at the end, but you must take into consideration that he was hamstrung by the ownership situation. The Cubs won three division titles (2003, 2007, 2008) while he was GM. I am not saying this is a coup for the Bombers, but it is not all bad either.
i don’t see how it’s bad at all; they’re not gonna give him any autonomy. it’s just funny because lol jim hendry
True enough, but when the Steinbrenners are involved autonomy is always limited one way or another.
The only “omy” Hendry should get is a lobotomy.
I think the key to this is that Hendry has experience as a scout and player development guy. Nothing wrong with having an extra set of eyes to evaluate players, especially someone from outside the organization who comes in with no bias or emotional attachment to a player. Hendry oversaw a number of good players come thru the farm while he served that position with the Cubs. Cashman is smart enough to know what responsibilities to delegate and which ones not to.
as long as hendry doesnt have to take zell,kenney, or mcdonaugh with him he is a good baseball guy. cubs were trying to maximize value and didnt care about consequences down the line (soriano) because zell was selling. hendry has gotten way to much heat for the state of the cubs.
Dude, I see where you try to state that they were trying to inflate the Cubs value, but Soriano is not exemplary of this. Irrespective to performance, Soriano’s contract has ALWAYS been a liability, not an asset. Assets improve value, not liabilities.
Cashman is wise. He is hiring Hendry to be sure always which is the bad choice and take the opposite direction.
Lol win.
the Steinbrenner/Costanza factor!
I could use a guy like that for picking football games.
But can he put together a winning team?
how about no, because he is not the yankees GM. he was prob only brought in to help if needed. anything he does will more then likely have to go through cashman and steinbrenners.
Of course he is the GM. Didn’t you read the article??
Yeah, I particularly enjoyed that paragraph where they reiterated that he is the GM.
Me too. That was damn fine writing. Damn fine.
That sound you hear is Robinson Cano cheering about future negotiations.
Is his compensation paid in doughnuts?
Basically everyone who makes it to a GM position is valuable at some job for a team, whether it’s scouting, ops, etc. Hendry’s also by all accounts a pretty great guy, even if he made some terrible mistakes as a GM. The snark about this is silly at best.
Cashman hired him to show ownership how lucky they are to have a good GM nothing better than to show there’s worse haha ( I like Cashman as a GM just had to make the joke)
actually they Hendry to be Cashman’s muscle kinda like Pesci to DeNiro in Casino…
just wait until Cashman hires Ned Colletti
too bad Ricciardi’s already taken, but there’s always reagins
People forget Hendry won 2 rings in Minnesota. I’m no Cubs fan, but he was trying to win it all. He gave some bad deals, but really those Cub teams were very good. It was an all or nothing proposition. If the Cubs would of won the WS, no one would of been complaining about Alfonso’s deal.
No. Andy McPhail won 2 rings with Minnesota. Hendry was never associated with the Twins.
That’s why people forget.
Isn’t this the guy who invented the muppets?
no no, he was just the inspiration for waldorf and statler
good luck to Hendry
lol wow hendry sucks just sayin
I always felt Hendry got a bad rap unfairly. He really did exactly what he was hired to do as Cubs GM. Win now. He delivered sort of getting us three division titles. He went out, signed the big names and traded for others for years.
But every year he was told to “win now” so what else was he supposed to do? He wasn’t even surprised last season when he got dismissed so, I think he knew it was coming. You can only keep that kind of managing up for so long after all before things snap.
Which is why Epstein was brought in to focus on “moneyball” as it were, since the Cubs have a gutted farm system and a few backloaded contracts still.
Glad Hendry was able to pick up another gig regardless.
He could be very helpful to have around. If there is a possible big trade comming up for the yanks, Cash can just ask for a memo from Hendry outlining what Hendry’s opinion of the purposal. Cashman can then take the memo to the younger/less experianced members of the front office, where he can use the memo as teaching lesson on how not to flush a teams future down the tube.
Sweet….now he can give new draft picks millions of dollars and no trade clauses