CINCINNATI – Jason Hammel said Joe Maddon is the same manager now in Chicago as he was when Hammel debuted with Tampa Bay during Maddon’s debut season as a manager.
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But it’s doubtful that Joe Maddon in 2006 could have pulled off in 2015 what this Joe Maddon has with these fast-rising young Cubs – whose 94th victory Thursday in Cincinnati gave them a major-league-best 21-game improvement over last season with three to play.
“It was so different,” Maddon said Thursday, when the Cubs beat the Reds 5-3 for a series sweep and a fifth straight victory overall. “The very first day with the Devil Rays and the very first day with the Cubs – two different worlds entirely.
“I didn’t have the same credibility in the sense that first two years there.”
As the Cubs prepare for an Oct. 7 wild-card playoff date with the Pirates, they do it with as many as 18 players in the mix for a postseason roster for the first time in their careers, including seven rookies.
They also do it with six players who have World Series experience, including three from Boston’s 2013 champion.
And they do it with a manager who surprised veteran starters Hammel and Jon Lester this year with early hooks from starts, who benched a three-time All-Star shortstop in August, demoted his closer after a first-batter walk in June, turned his veteran left fielder into a platoon second baseman, played his rookie third baseman in all three outfield spots and all but eliminated batting practice in September.
A manager who never was drafted, never played in the majors and spent nearly 30 years after a brief minor-league career earning his big break with Tampa Bay.
“That’s where the experience comes in, especially with as young of a team as we have,” said Hammel, whose scoreless five innings Thursday was a strong finish to a roller-coaster 10-7 season (3.74 ERA) – and may have assured a Division Series start in St. Louis if the Cubs beat the Pirates Wednesday.
Hammel understands as well as anyone on the team the difference in authority and resonance that Maddon’s voice brings to Chicago after his heralded, playoff-heavy tenure in Tampa, having butted heads with Maddon over early hooks following his July 8 leg injury. The pitcher also seemed to always stop short of challenging Maddon’s authority or intentions.
“At some point the character comes out in the team,” Hammel said,”where you second-guess, or you don’t second-guess and check your ego, and then you’re like, `What’s the ultimate goal here? It’s to win.’ ”
The fact the Cubs hired this 61-year-old version of Maddon – the one whose often unorthodox methods had a successful nine-year trial run with the Rays — almost certainly eliminated the kinds of clubhouse skepticism and grumbling that might have otherwise slowed this year’s rapid ascent.
“There was a lot of tough conversations that first year [in Tampa] with guys that really weren’t very good major league players that thought they were,” Maddon said. “Wow. That was like some really delusional stuff you had to deal with, behind closed doors.”
It got better over time with communication, turnover and some success, he said.
“I can’t disagree that I think it’s somewhat easier to get my point across now,” he said. “I’m sure they were questioning me a lot more behind my back then than maybe they do now.”
Even with the occasional veteran eye roll over pajama-themed charters or magic shows, this mix of ages and backgrounds in the clubhouse has seemed to uniquely buy in as a whole to the play-in-the-moment, reach-for-the-grail, expect-the-unexpected-from-the-manager ethos brought by Maddon.
The sudden-impact rookie talent and October-veteran influence of guys like Lester and David Ross haven’t hurt, either.
“I just know that he’s more confident in [his methods] than he was probably in ’08 and ’09, just because the credibility might not have been there because he’d never really had the manager’s role,” Hammel said.
“Still, at some points you don’t get it, when you’re coming out of games early,” Hammel said. “But we can question and be disappointed as much as we want. It’s all about the ‘W,’ and we’ve done a lot of that this year, so you really can’t question it.”
