Building The Dynasty #2: Sparks To A Flame
Highlighting the core members of the Chicago Flames dynasty
When you’re building a championship roster, you think about everybody from the star player to the role players. Every team has some kind of star emerge. There’s always a kind of pecking order, but it’s those scrappy clubhouse guys that make up the heart and soul of a title team. Over the years in Chicago, we’ve had lots of guys come and go — seriously, during my tenure as GM I made over 45 trades, we drafted several hundred guys, free agents and imports.
It was a wild ride.
Five years into my tenure, I was elevated to Vice President for baseball operations. I approved deals, but made fewer of them. I did oversee the draft still. Our farm system wasn’t much after the deals kept coming and I kept moving the core, but we were always able to shift the foundation some and keep things moving forward.
We were really lucky. And fortunate. We had years we got hit by injuries, especially in 2014 and 2015 and it caused us to be missing some core pieces. I’d always try to shuffle, but the problem with shuffling a deck is you can only shuffle so many times before you have to play with the hand you’ve been dealt.
In the next chapter, I’m going to outline the players who were my favorites and how we acquired them. Many of our core WAR guys were homegrown. We did get heavy into acquisitions in the later years, but that was by necessity when we didn’t have high draft picks anymore.
One of the interesting things is how often we’d end up bringing a few guys back over the years. We certainly had our own “core” group that we liked and it was fun to see how guys who end up leaving and then back in our clubhouse at some other point during the run.
SP RICH MCGRATH
Acquired: via trade (w/Minnesota)
No one expected what he became when he came to us. We did want a solid starter who wasn’t super expensive. That was our goal. I never, ever expected him to become an ace. But that’s precisely what he turned out to be. Four-time Matt Munroe (Pitcher of the Year) award winner, three-time MVP which is especially amazing given that pitchers are RARELY considered for the award in our league, it’s a real sign of how much respect the eight-time all-star and strikeout king gets among the press and fans alike.
Anyway, “The Franchise” is the heart and soul of this team and our rotation. So goes he, so goes the franchise. He’s 11 wins away (as of 2015) from being the all-time leader in wins in franchise history at the age of 30. We think it’s certainly a testament to his skills as the greatest power pitcher of his generation, but playing in a ballpark that is not hospitable has surely helped him in the same way someone at altitude would benefit from the dry air for longballs.
Our pitching coach starting in 2007 was a former minor league instructor named Pedro Sandoval. He had not worked in the bigs before taking over as our full-time pitching coach that first year and his magic is really the unsung cog in our success.
2B/SS JODY CARROLL
Acquired: via trade (New York Gothams)
The 4th overall pick of the 2003 draft was hitting .235 in AA when he was dealt to us. If a guy needed a change of scenery it was him. He got it. He was in the bigs by 2008 and an all-star by 2010. The 2013 NLCS Most Valuable Player, he’s managed to get in where he fits in with this club since the start.
Still part of the team now, he signed an 8-year extension worth $114.5 million that should keep him with the Flames until he’s about to retire. Injury prone, but productive, he’s been a consistent part of our middle infield and should have a few good years left in those legs.
SP JULIAN HELMER
Acquired: FA signing (2005)
He showed up before I got here and is one of a declining few on the roster who managed to wear Kansas City Gray before showing up with us in Chicago along with the office furniture. A two-time all-star, Helmer boasts a career ERA of 3.20 and 136 wins all with the organization.
In 2012, Helmer signed a 7-year deal worth $93.5 million. He’s not an elite pitcher, but occupies the reliable rung and every team needs a consistent arm like that. Especially when you consider he signed as a minor league free agent, this was a pretty outstanding acquisition.
RP Andres Marroquin
Acquired: 59th overall pick, 2002 first-year player draft.
El Gigante was a 2nd round pick of the Kansas City Katz in 2002. He spent all of his career with the organization until we opted not to bring him back after the 2014 season. It came down to money. He went across town to play for the Chicago Rogues inking a 3-year deal worth $54 million.
We faced him in the 2015 Sunset Series as it was the first-ever intra-city battle in the championship. It was weird. Still, he was our first top-notch closer. I just don’t believe philosophically in paying a closer top dollar for such limited innings. Especially on this club in that ballpark. Marroquin is still a top talent and don’t be surprised if they bring him back someday for a swan song when it’s done, as he’s a hugely popular player in Chicago now and especially with Flames fans.
1B Ray Greathouse
Acquired: via Trade (Fresno Sun Sox)
One of the tactics I employed a lot during my tenure was getting rental players in their walk year to come join us, love it and then extend with our club before testing free agency. The first guy I tested this theory with was Ray Greathouse. A solid player who was on the brink of elitedom when we picked him up, he won back-to-back NL Player of the Year awards after we acquired him from Fresno. A two-time Gold Glove winner, Greathouse was part of four title teams during his tenure in Chicago. A career .338 hitter in the post-season, he was clutch and a stabilizing force for us in the clubhouse too.
He signed a seven-year deal worth $108m with us after that first year and off we went until he became a free agent in 2014. He now plays for the New Orleans Alligators as of 2015.
LF Matt Krumwiede
Acquired: via trade (New Orleans Alligators)
The dominant team of the 90s and early 00s were the New Orleans Alligators. From 1994–2006, they missed the postseason just once and over that span won four titles. Krumwiede was acquired as a prospect in 1997 when the New York Gothams — seeking to break a 50+ year title drought — traded the young outfielder to New Orleans to secure the services of all-time greatest home run hitter of all time B.J. Keefe who led them to a title.
Three years later, Krumwiede proved he wasn’t crumbs at all, but instead an all-star in the making. After powering the Gators to two titles, the team hit hard times in 2007 and beyond, missing the post-season for three straight years and began rebuilding. Krumwiede had signed a 10-year deal worth $163.1 million that was meant to keep him in Alligator purple for the rest of his career, but started whispering to management that if they could get a haul for him, he’d waive his no-trade clause. He just had one request, “send me to a winner.”
In the deal, New Orleans got an all-star first baseman in Ryu Kawaguchi, who we’d signed from Japan a year earlier. Zach Hammer turned out to be their ace two years later — honestly, I didn’t realize he’d be that good or else I’d have thought about keeping him — and Pretlow turned out to be a solid outfielder for a few years too. So for their part, they managed to get back to the post-season two years later which wasn’t bad for dealing their star player.
About Krumwiede?
During the four years he spent with us, he managed to be a steadying force to our lineup and somehow hit 30 HRs in our cavernous ballpark during the 2010 season. He’s the three-time Sunset Series MVP.
After the 2012 season, we dealt him back to New Orleans as the team was trying to win a title and we felt we owed it to him — also we wanted to relieve ourselves of his contract — and after a year, New Orleans was back in the tank and we decided “why not?” and pulled the trigger on bringing him back in his walk year to help us to win another title in 2013.
He’s one of those guys that we’re considering whether we should retire his number despite the few years he played for us.
C Will Kane
Acquired: via trade (from Florida Rockets)
We got Will Kane in 2009 from Florida in a year when we needed a catcher. He was blocked by another prospect, so he was expendable. He showed up and immediately entered a platoon with our starter at the time. He didn’t become the regular starter until two years later. Always a dependable guy, he let him go finally when he hit free agency, but not before he won us four rings and logged a career 19.8 WAR over seven seasons in Chicago.
SP Bill Anthony
Acquired: via trade (from Boise Cutthroats)
In 2008, I wondered if we had the juice to contend for a wild card or if we’d regress. In July, we were actually a few games behind in the race. I decided not to make any irrational moves. But when Boise let me know that Bill Anthony, an ace was available, I felt like I had to take a bite. He’d signed a 6-year/$151m deal in 2005 with the club, so his $25m a year average salary wasn’t a small price. I worked with ownership to see if the deal was feasible, they told me it was and we went for it.
We sent Jon Garwood, the centerpiece of one of the first deals I made when I took over the team from New York — the guy we were gonna build around — and flipped him in a seven-player deal that yielded us Anthony who was just what the doctor ordered for us that year.
The centerpiece of that deal for me was a young outfielder named Jon Garwood. He’d been an all-star, he had a few years of team control still and I felt like if we weren’t going to be good for a while that it didn’t make sense to have guys with huge contracts on the roster just to get fans happy about the new team. Nothing is worse than taking over a franchise and having people get invested in players who are always a revolving door out of the building.
After the team fell short of a title in 2008, (losing in the Sunset Series in eight games to the Virginia Mariners)
I wondered if they’d make me try to find a move to jettison the contract. Instead, we kept Anthony around and fortified the club around him.
It resulted in a run of three straight titles after that and Anthony was a big part of it. In 2011, we signed him to a 4-year extension worth $115m. It was problematic in 2013 when he was on the downslope of his career and many of our younger hurlers had managed to boot him out of the rotation. He retired later that year, but remains a fan favorite for many in Chicago for what he did for us.
Nothing is worse than taking over a franchise and having people get invested in players who are always a revolving door out of the building.
In the next edition, we’ll talk about some of the homegrown players developed by the Flames organization over the past decade. Many of them were centerpieces of deals to other teams, but still, there were a few quality guys that have helped the team become the team of the early-2000s so far.
