CHICAGO _ Team President Theo Epstein declined to pin the Cubs' first-half struggles entirely on manager Joe Maddon as he enters the final months of his five-year contract.
"Look, Joe's been remarkably effective and remarkably consistent, so I'm not going to sit here and say this is on him," Epstein said Saturday night before the Cubs-White Sox game at Guaranteed Rate Field.
"I look at it collectively. My job is to put him in a position to succeed. His job is to put the players in a position to succeed. When we're not succeeding, you can't put it on one thing. We're collectively not getting the job done."
The fate of Maddon and the current roster, however, could be decided by how the Cubs perform leading up to the July 31 trade deadline. There's a strong preference to embark on a lengthy winning streak to get some separation from the rest of a congested National League Central and allow Epstein and his staff to make aggressive upgrades.
"We're not close to anything right now," Epstein said. "We're in a proactive stance."
"We're looking to find ways to try to help the group and if we can, but nothing is close. We're also engaged with Joe and the coaching staff trying to find ways for this group to get more out of this group, play better and put us in a better position as buyers.
"Right now we're in a collective slump. We're not playing in a way that's representative of who we are. And it's gone on for a while. We're all searching for answers, looking for every lever we can pull."
Epstein countered his comments saying that a front office "can go on hot streaks." That was evident last season, when the Cubs got no contributions from free-agent signings Yu Darvish and Tyler Chatwood but struck a bonanza with the acquisitions of Cole Hamels and Jesse Chavez. And the addition of reliever Brandon Kintzler has paid off this season.
"I look at it as none of us are satisfied," Maddon said. "We feel like we didn't have the first half we're capable of having. We're not satisfied but optimistic. I like the partnership we have and the organization we have."
