Hendry: "We haven't yet done a great job developing positional players."

It looks to me like the Northsiders have committed themselves to a youth movement. Whether or not Baker will survive remains to be seen.

This from ESPN INSIDER:

Hendry also is under pressure, in Chicago, where Cubs fans have become less patient. "We want to win today, but there has to be a steady growth with young players," says Hendry, who turned to Double-A this week and brought up outfielders Matt Murton and Adam Greenberg; had he not been hurt, Felix Pie would have been up two weeks ago. "We haven't yet done a great job developing positional players," says Hendry. "But we hope we will. Do we have a list of players we won't trade? Absolutely. I wouldn't say them publicly [Pie, Dopirak at the top]. And we can be wrong, and five years look back and think how silly we were. But that's not the way to look at it. You want young blood coming in, and in terms of business, you'd better have it or there's no way you can survive financially."

I like this statement. It's an honest assessment of the situation. As a fan I would support the Cubs going young even if it meant a few more lean years. What the hell will a few more be at this point? (The Cubs can start positioning themselves to make a run in 2008. 100 years, John McDonough will have a field day with that.)

I look at this statement along with the Hawkins trade and see a team that is moving in the direction of youth. If this is the case the next topic of conversation has to be the Manager. As far as I can find the only young position players that Dusty has ever played are Rich Aurilia and this site's favorite whipping boy Korey.

Hendry's plan back when he took over the GM job was to build with the farm system. Two things happened after that made him change lanes. First he hired Dusty and secondly the Cubs came closer than any one could expect in 2003. Now with the 2003 team blown up it seems to make sense that Hendry would get back to his plan.