Jed Hoyer doesn’t think Crane Kenney’s candor is making his job harder.
Kenney, the Chicago Cubs’ president of business operations, went on “Mully & Haugh” earlier in the month and was surprisingly candid.
“The business is still healthy, and that left Jed with a lot of money to spend this year – like last year, where he didn’t spend all the money he had last year because he didn’t see transactions that made sense to him," Kenney said on Dec. 9. "I hope there are transactions that make sense to us this year to spend all the money that he has. He’s gotten off to a good start.”
That led to discourse that Kenney was making Hoyer’s job more difficult and putting the Cubs at a competitive disadvantage. It’s not often that someone high up in the business operations side is that forthright publicly, especially about payroll.
But asked about that on “Mully and Haugh,” specifically The Athletic’s classification of “internal tension” between the business and baseball sides of the operation, Hoyer said there is none.
“It was just one of those distractions. I talk to Crane two or three times a day, we have a great relationship, there’s no sense of tension,” Hoyer said. “To me, I think that’s what I was kind of even alluding to before, I brief those guys all the time on what’s going on. They knew, Crane knew that with (Dansby) Swanson we were in good position, we were talking to them, that there was real mutual interest.
“There was never any sense of additional pressure or anything like that based on the comments. Sometimes with these jobs there’s a soap opera element to them, but we’ve got to do our best to ignore that, But in the building there was never any tension or never any concern, and like I said throughout the whole process I was talking to Crane and Tom (Ricketts) the entire time.
“We have a great relationship, and we’re all in this together. As you think about the organization, you win together, and when you have to build things back you do it together as well. They’ve been really supportive, which is wonderful.”
It has been a productive offseason so far for the Cubs, who have made big additions with Swanson, Cody Bellinger and Jameson Taillon. If there's been any tension along the way, it seems like Hoyer hardly has been fazed by it.
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