An Interview With Bruce Miles

ACB- Obviously this season didn’t go the way anyone planned/wanted. What are 3 moves you would like to see the Cubs make and have you heard anything regarding the resources Hendry will have/not have to make moves this offseason? Bruce Miles - It appears there will not be a lot of payroll flexibility this off-season, which may mean the Cubs go the trade route more than free agency. I’d like to see them re-sign Grabow to a reasonable deal, no more than two years. A bat to replace Bradley and a top of the order hitter would be nice, but that may be asking a lot, given the tight budget I expect Hendry to operate under this winter. ACB - Have you heard any buzz as to where Bradley might end up? Is Jim going to have to eat a huge part of the contract or will some team take a chance that 08 Milton will show up vs 09 disaster we all saw here? Miles- All I’ve heard is that Hendry is talking with two or three teams, and I’m sure he’d like to create the perception of a market for Bradley so maybe he can get something decent in return or not have to eat all of the money. Some team is likely to take a chance on Bradley. ACB- Based on your observations of the man for the past two years what would you say Lou’s biggest strength is and also what do you think his biggest weakness is? Miles- Lou observes skills well and can size up who can play and who can’t. He also sees subtleties of each player. He noticed that one player was grounding into double plays not because he was slow, but because he was “screwing himself into the ground” on his swing. He also had a pitcher move to one side of the rubber because he felt, as an ex-hitter, this would give the pitcher an advantage. As far as weaknesses, he tends to grow impatient with players and “get off” them after even short slumps. On the flip side, just one good day at the plate or one home run can change that. He also is impatient with relief pitchers. ACB- This blog has been a major supporter of Milton Bradley over the last year and extremely critical of some of your colleagues in the Chicago media. Do you think that the other beat writers gave Bradley a legitimate shot or were they simply baiting the guy from day 1 hoping they could get a juicy quote and run with it. Miles- I can’t speak for the other writers, but I can’t recall an incident of baiting. Bradley provided juicy quotes without any provocation. The only story I really questioned as the story in the Sun-Times about alleged racism among Cubs fans. That story ran sometime around Opening Day, and I really didn’t see the point of it. ACB- I would have to disagree on the baiting. From day one Sullivan, Kaplan and to a certain extent Whittenmeyer were adding little tweaks and throwaway lines to articles about Bradley. I know at ACB one of our writers Mercurial Outfielder had a series called “Paul Sullivan has a problem Pt 1-9,999,999,999999999999” that chronicled this. Now obviously I know these guys are your colleagues and you can’t just go around trashing them but when Paul Sullivan goes ON RECORD in Vineline as saying he gives different coverage to players who are “nice” to him that is a major, major problem to me. Journalism is better than that and to see a writer flaunt his violation of basic journalism ethics is infuriating. Would you agree that this is a big deal or is it something that happens more than us fans know about? Miles- I cannot speak for the other writers, so you’d have to ask them what they mean by whatever comments they’ve made. It’s always seemed to me that players who learned to deal with the media would get a break, especially if they learned to say, “I screwed up,” once in awhile. Media people are human beings like anybody else, so I’m sure how they’re treated affects some things in some ways. Again, you’d have to ask the people you mentioned in the question. I’ve seen Bradley trash perfect legitimate questions and even wonder why someone would ask something innocuous as, “How you feeling?” after he was ill during spring training. (He gave a pretty vulgar and graphic answer that was really uncalled for.) When asked if he was feeling “comfortable” at the plate during the season, he turned it into the whole, “I’m not comfortable because of the hatred and adversity” thing. It was a baseball question. Maybe someone should ask what’s wrong with this guy instead of wondering about what’s being asked or if he’s being “baited.” Even Cubs people were shaking their heads over his responses to questions. Whether you like or don’t like Sully or Gordon, they’ve gone up to Milton, looked him in the eye and asked their questions. The responses were up to Milton, someone who has been in pro ball for a decade and should know how to handle the media. ACB- Staying on the Bradley tangent- Without giving too much inside info away is there any one situation that you could shed some light on where Bradley behaved in a wrong way that fans like us wouldn’t see from the monitors in our mom’s basements? Miles- Mom’s basement? Oh, I get it. Just kidding. It probably wouldn’t be a big deal to anybody else, but when one of my colleagues was interviewing Bradley in spring training, Bradley never looked up from his electronic device _ he was texting the whole time during the interview. After the interview was done, he came near all of us and said, “They could have signed anybody. There’s a reason they signed me.” I have no idea why he did that. Just a day or two before that, he was all smiles as he handed out bubble-gum cigars to celebrate the birth of his son. He even included the reporters in the handouts. I know that he didn’t interact with his teammates a whole lot, at least not when we had our pregame clubhouse access. ACB- Do you think the overall quality of sports journalism in Chicago has decreased over the last few years? If so how? Miles- I don’t know if “decreased” is the right word. If you look at baseball stories from 30 years ago, there was no mention of advanced stats, for example. You still don’t have much, but there are a few of us who are trying to incorporate that into our work. What we’re doing is storytelling and trying to chronicle a soap-opera of a baseball season day after day. Years ago, the game stories carried more straight play by play. Nowadays, it’s more quote-oriented, and I think that’s better because most of the fans have seen the game. In baseball journalism, I’d like to see more statistical analysis, if you can do that without losing the casual reader who may not know or care about things such as OBP or OPS, let alone OPS-plus, ERA-plus or wOBA. ACB- Who are 3 Cub prospects that you think the organization really likes? Miles- They really like Castro, Vitters and Cashner. ACB- Before Lou the Cubs were never a big on base team. Have other members of the Cubs brass (Hendry, Hughes etc etc) really seen the light regarding this topic or is Hendry the same guy who brought us Juan Pierre and made some anti- OBP comments a few years back? Miles- The ironic thing is that when they signed Bradley, they did so based largely on his OBP and OPS numbers in Texas. I’d say they’ve come a long ways over the past three years or so. The first news release I can think of where they mentioned OBP was when they signed Daryle Ward and cited his OBP as a pinch hitter. Their contention a few years ago was, “Good hitters are going to have good on-base percentages.” I suppose that’s true, but they’ve looked more at the science of the whole thing over the past three years. I think it all hit home last year, when the Cubs led the league in OBP, walks and runs scored and wound up winning 97 games. ACB- What are you expectations for the Cubs payroll in the next few year when Ricketts takes complete control? Miles - I think it will grow only slightly this off-season. I’m not sure you’re going to see a Yankees-level payroll with the Cubs but all indications are that Ricketts knows he’s got a big-market club that plays to close to 100 percent capacity in its ballpark. ACB- What current core player do you feel is most likely to get a contract extension? Miles- Ted Lilly. ACB- Which current Cub’s actual personality differs the most from the way he is portrayed in the press? Miles- I think the “press” portrays guys pretty accurately. I think fans give a bum rap to a guy like Soriano, who is as friendly and as generous with his time as anybody I’ve ever covered. I’ve gotten e-mails and people have called him “Sammy Sosa” on my blog, and nothing could be further from the truth. Theriot’s a good guy, but he can get a little testy after a bad game.