Why firing Cubs manager Joe Maddon during the season would stink — and be understandable

Sometimes job performance is a secondary factor in why a head coach or a manager loses his job.

Sometimes the factor that matters most is the need for change.

Unless the Cubs turn things around soon, we might be getting to that point with Joe Maddon.

Would it be fair? Warranted? Honorable? No, all the way around.

Does the blame for the Cubs’ mediocre first half fall more on the players and the front office? Yes, it does.

But remember when an irate Maddon bolted out of the Cubs’ dugout last week to protest what he considered dangerously inside pitches by the Pirates? He did that because he was upset and wanted to protect his players. But mostly he was doing what managers have done from time immemorial: He was trying to pump some life into a listless team. The thinking behind it goes like this: If I act like a complete maniac and get thrown out of a game, maybe the part of my players’ brains that controls emotion will start firing like battleship guns and we’ll go on a winning streak!

There would be a similar rationale for firing Maddon during the season: An underachieving team with a chance to win a division might react positively to something drastic, such as replacing the manager.

I don’t like it. It always feels like a cheap ploy.

But I understand it, in the way I understand why cavemen carried clubs. It’s the way sports works, in all its primitive glory. In a column the other day, I called the idea of firing Maddon during the season “silly,’’ but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that silly is the second cousin of desperate. And how long before the Cubs are in desperation mode?

I can’t make a logical argument for the team jettisoning Maddon in midseason. He has done everything that club president Theo Epstein had asked of him after last season’s disappointing ending. That included being much more hands-on with the players this year. To get rid of a manager who won a World Series would be a terrible look for an organization that had been wandering the desert for more than a century.

But I could understand why Epstein would do it. I’ve seen coaches and managers sacrificed in the name of change too many times to count. And if it’s likely that Maddon won’t be re-signed after the season (he’s in the last year of his contract), what’s the difference if he’s sent on his way now or later?

The counterargument is a good one: What managerial candidate out there would be better than Maddon? The answer is that there isn’t one. But, again, it misses the point. If players aren’t performing up to their potential and if they’re playing sloppy baseball too often, perhaps everyone has gotten too comfortable with the status quo.

A rule to live by: Pay no attention to players who gush publicly about a besieged coach or manager. We heard some of that from Cubs players during the All-Star break. It might indeed be what they believe about Maddon, but because professional athletes almost never criticize the people they answer to, their compliments shouldn’t carry a lot of weight.

The Cubs could deal one or more of their players before the July 31 trade deadline, another way of shaking up a drowsy team. That would put the onus (and pressure) on the people who haven’t played well. But there’s a vein that runs through sports that says change at the top makes the most impactful statement. Epstein generally doesn’t go with the flow of conventional thinking, but would he consider replacing the popular Maddon with the popular David Ross, the dancing, smiling, baseball-analyzing World Series hero? For many Cubs fans, that would take away some of the sting of losing Maddon.

It’s impossible to argue with Maddon’s accomplishments. To repeat, he won a World Series. With the Cubs (no, really). But if that seven-year competitive window we’ve heard so much about is starting to close earlier than expected for the franchise, then it’s easy to see why the team would decide to go in — wait for it — another direction.

It would stink, but in the peculiar manner of sports, it would be understandable.

Whether you like Maddon or not, whether you think he’s a good manager or not, none of it might be the criteria for his remaining as manager of the Cubs. The need for change very well could be. The next few weeks might tell us how strong that need is.