The Cubs are 15-20 in their past 35 games and have fallen to 45-40, which is a game behind the National League Central-leading Brewers. Amid the stagnant play, Maddon pushed back when asked if he's worried about what the on-field play might mean about him continuing to be the manager of the Cubs into the future.
"Not at all," Maddon said on the Laurence Holmes Show on Tuesday afternoon. "It's not connected. Everybody is really on the same page. I talk to the guys all the time -- Jed (Hoyer), Theo (Epstein) and all of the front office as well as the coaching staff, we understand what's going on. We have processed it properly, and we're trying to make the appropriate adjustments. I don't worry about that. Going to the NLCS and winning a World Series and 95 wins last year, I think we've done -- the methods are good, we just have to extract it out it out of this particular group right now."
Maddon is working in a lame-duck season, as his contract expires at the end of the 2019 campaign. He has instead referred to his status as an impending "free agent" and shot down any notion that it's a distraction.
What Maddon is worried about is the Cubs' on-field performance. They've struggled with runners in scoring position all season long and lately have been been plagued by poor baserunning and some sloppy defense. In the rotation, injuries to right-hander Kyle Hendricks and now left-hander Cole Hamels have been been reason for concern.
Because of all that, Maddon knows that no matter what, the present poor play will reflect on him from an external perspective, even if in-house the Cubs are focused on a fix rather than Maddon's leadership.
"It should," Maddon said. "People are going to do that immediately, and I understand that. That's just the way this industry works. That's the way the world works. I don't take it personally. I know what I do and how I do it. I think the body of work speaks for itself. We're in a moment right now that we have to get through. Like I said, it's not like we need to do anything spectacularly different or add anything new. We just have to get guys to, again, think properly in the moment and process this moment in a better way. I understand that. That's how people react. It's a long baseball season. You go through bad moments, and I've been there before. But I promise you, I don't take it personally."