It's been a mere three days since Theo Epstein was introduced as the new savior President of Baseball Operations of the Chicago Cubs and yet the chorus of critics is already in full voice.  Even our hero and role model, a man we deeply respect and admire, is accusing Epstein of being a hypocrite for wanting to sit down with Carlos Zambrano.  But I think if you look at it clinically, you'll see why.

When you take a new leadership position, the first thing you want to do is evaluate what you have.  What are the strengths? What are weaknesses?  Who do you value?  Who can you live without? By talking to key people, you find things out. And, if you are smart, you don't want to come in and appear like a ruthless cut throat, because if you do that, people, the ones you want to keep and the ones you don't will immediately jump ship. Besides, everyone has a story and somewhere in the compilation of all of the stories lies the truth.  Being dismissive of someone because they are perceived as an idiot is bad practice.  If they are an idiot, you will gain that knowledge after meeting with them and then you can let them going knowing you have no doubt.

If you at least give the impression that you are fair and willing to listen, it will help your recruiting in that people will at least understand why you had to let so many people go.  When Epstein says "I want to share my vision of the organization with Mike and I'd like to find out what his vision is", it means "I'm going to tell Mike what my expectations are and then see if he can fulfill them."  After sitting down with Quade, Epstein will probably say "Mike and I discussed a lot of things and while he has been a great contributor to our growth as an organization, moving forward, I felt we needed a new voice in the dugout."  Translation: "Loser"  But when you hear it said as I phrased it above, it sounds almost apologetic.  That's the image that corporate America wants, to sound kind on the outside while being ruthless and cut throat on the outside.

Epstein has indicated he wants to talk to Zambrano.  But that talk may be simply "If I weren't going to keep you, where would you consider playing?  He may go so far as to tell Zambrano who the interested parties are and if Zambrano would be interested in going to those teams. Zambrano still is an asset and Epstein, as a responsible manager, must decide how best to leverage him to return the most value.  Chances are, his computer is spitting out stats from the Marlins farm system even as we speak. 

As Dale Carnegie once said, "A good salesman is one who can tell you to go to hell while making you look forward to the trip."

Managers today are not forthcoming, they are ambiguous to hide their intent and to insulate them from bad publicity and hurt feelings.  What they say privately in high level meetings with their intimate associates are not the things you are likely to hear firsthand in public.  The public face is just a stream of noise to satisfy the media.  This is what Theo and his crew have mastered.

I have no doubt that Quade and Zambrano will not return next year. I think Epstein wants to learn more about what went wrong in 2010 and 2011 and to use these two emotional men as a resource to gain that knowledge.  I think Epstein already has a plan on how he is going to attack things, but he is not going to share that in public.

Nobody is going to stand up on their first day and say "There are a lot of rats on this ship and I am going to hunt them down, root them out and eliminate them."  That doesn't mean he hasn't secretly ordered a couple cases of rat poison.