(670 The Score) David Ross learned plenty in his first season as Cubs manager, which included his club winning the NL Central crown before suffering a disappointing and quick exit at the hands of the Marlins in the wild-card round.
With time to reflect on his managerial debut with the offseason upon him, Ross has been assessing where he can get better. One area he has identified is perhaps being more aggressive in his conversations and decisions with players who may be struggling.
“I take it with a grain of salt, because it was such a short season – but trying to be able to troubleshoot some issues a little bit faster,” Ross said on the Laurence Holmes Show on Wednesday. “Whereas in 162 as a player and how I try to put myself in situations where other managers for me, how they handled things, like you want to be patient, you want to give the players the benefit of the doubt to work through some things before you take them a little bit of information or some thoughts or ideas that you might have. I erred on the side of patience this year, which in 60 games is probably not the way to do it. But I also in my first time going through it, I never want to create any kind of insecurities or distrust between me and a player where they ever think that I’m panicking or I don’t believe in them. And so you got to walk that line very carefully.”
Ross also cited connecting better with various branches of the Cubs organization – the research and development department, the strength-and-conditioning staff, the training staff – as another goal of his in the 2021 season.
“Those are relationships you have to build,” he said. “You try to do your best with all you have on your plate, but I definitely could’ve done a better job just connecting with different groups as a whole.”