‘There might be gold at the end of the fricking rainbow, but you’re still losing every day’: Remembering the 2012 Cubs

There won’t be any reunions for the first team of the Cubs’ rebuild.

Seven years ago, the Cubs embarked on an unusual season, one in which they would lose mostly by design, rather than by their time-honored standard of incompetence.

The 2012 season, which really began in October 2011 when Theo Epstein was introduced as the new president of baseball operations, was the start of something different, a journey that would eventually take the Cubs to Cleveland on a warm November evening in 2016, when the ghosts of the past were harbingers for the joy of the present.

But like every trip, it had to start somewhere.

The 2012 Cubs were the first team of the Epstein rebuild and now, with the organization at a crossroads between rebuild and reckoning, I wanted to look back at the year that started it all. Mostly I wanted to look back on, and in some cases, look for the players who made up the team.

We all remember the press conferences and the plan, but what about the ones who had to live it every day?

“In baseball, I think the only thing that keeps you sane is winning,” starting pitcher Jeff Samardzija said. “If you don’t win in baseball, everybody tends to lose their mind, so it wasn’t the easiest year.”

The Cubs lost the first game of that season, 2-1, behind Ryan Dempster’s 7 2/3 innings and they won their last game of the season, 5-4, on a walk-off hit from Bryan LaHair. 

In between, they lost 100 games and won 60.

Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer said they wanted to give the team, which was loaded with veterans at the beginning, a “puncher’s chance.” But after the losses quickly piled up, he said the running joke became, “We took hope off the page right away.” The front office was more than prepared to make trades and take flyers on young players, and they were very mindful of their future draft position.

The 2012 Cubs had the second-worst record in baseball, behind only the tanking Houston Astros. It was, to my surprise at the time, the first time a Cubs team lost at least 100 games in 46 years. The losing had a purpose, to build something better.

“But there was no guarantee of a happy ending when you’re going through it,” Hoyer said.

Especially for the players.

Fifty-three people suited up for the Cubs, from the famous (Kerry Wood) to the forgotten (Jaye Chapman). It was a roster stocked with organizational guys drafted or signed during the Jim Hendry era. There were four players who made debuts that season and never played a major league game again. Eleven players’ careers ended in a Cubs uniform. Seven players who were selected off waivers (and one in the Rule 5 Draft) suited up that season.

Kerry Wood made a ballyhooed return to the organization at the Cubs Convention, but retired in mid-May, notching one final strikeout, his 1,470th as a Cub.

The Cubs drafted Albert Almora Jr. and signed Jorge Soler to a $30 million deal during that summer, their first high-profile additions in the youth movement. Who knew at the time that Ryan Dempster for Kyle Hendricks would be the in-season trade that mattered the most?

When I asked Hoyer to remember some high and low points from his perspective, he had two series in mind, a July 20-22 trip to St. Louis and a Sept. 25-27 trip to Colorado.

The low point, first:

“I was in St. Louis, I had worked out the deal with (then-Braves GM) Frank Wren,” Hoyer said. “We’re going to have a deal with Dempster, but then he used his no-trade — which ended up being really good for us. And then (Matt) Garza walked off the mound (with an injury) in St. Louis. That all happened in the same weekend, the third week in July. Dempster using his no-trade and Garza walking off the mound, that was definitely a low point.”

As for the high point, both the Cubs and Rockies were 59-94 going into their series, so there was something important on the line: draft positioning. Houston was unreachable for the top pick, but the second was up for grabs.

“I went out there for that series,” he said. “It must’ve been after we shut Samardzija down. Our starting pitching was not Coors Field ready, is the most appropriate way to put it. We got pounded in all three games and that sealed us getting the No. 2 pick and we got Bryant.”

The Cubs’ three starters in that series, Chris Rusin, Jason Berken and Chris Volstad, gave up 19 runs in a combined 10 2/3 innings.

Even though it’s just a number, the Cubs front office wanted to keep the losses to double digits. 

“Losing 100 was a huge deal,” Hoyer said. “We really didn’t want to lose 100. At the end of the year we were really hoping to check in around 99 and obviously we couldn’t make it happen.”

It’s only been seven years, but everything has changed for the Cubs, including expectations. This year’s team could make the playoffs for the fifth-straight season, but it has been largely a disappointment and it could cost manager Joe Maddon his job. With the clock ticking on the greatest Cubs team in modern history, let’s go back to the beginning.

The 2012 Cubs

Jairo Ascencio

Then: Relief pitcher, acquired in trade from Cleveland, 3.07 ERA in 14 2/3 innings over 12 appearances

Now: Relief pitcher, Saraperos de Saltillo (Mexican League), 4.50 ERA in four innings over 5 appearances

Jeff Baker

Then: Infielder, .753 OPS in 54 games, traded to Detroit for PTBNL on Aug. 5

Now: Retired, living in Virginia

Darwin Barney

Then: Gold Glove-winning second baseman

Now: Consultant, Portland (Ore.) Diamond Project

Darwin Barney’s errorless streak was one of the few highlights of the season.

Already a skilled defensive player, he got even better under the tutelage of coach Pat Listach and utilizing the new video tools installed by the Epstein regime. 

After moving past Cubs legend Ryne Sandberg for the NL record of 123 error-free games in a row at second base, Barney fell a game short of beating Placido Polanco’s major-league record of 141, thanks to a misplay in Arizona late in the season. Let him narrate it:

“(Justin Upton) hits kind of a hard chopper up the middle, I move up the middle and make a quick throw to Rizz, glove side,” Barney said of that Sept. 28 game. “It bounces, short hops him and bounces over his glove. He could’ve blocked. I could’ve ate it. But for whatever reason, they gave the guy a base hit. The error came when the ball got by Rizz. The runner on second (Aaron Hill) rounded third and scored. It was pretty emotional afterward. Dale Sveum got choked up. Rizz was choked up.”

Or as Jeff Samardzija remembered it: “No errors all year and Rizzo missed a short hop in Arizona that ruined it. Couldn’t get his big body in front of it, I guess, huh?”

(There’s a reason Barney calls Samardzija one of his favorite teammates.)

There wasn’t much to celebrate in the 2012 season, but Darwin Barney’s errorless streak was a positive. (Brian Kersey / Getty Images)

But for as much fun as that was for Barney to get in the record books and win the Gold Glove over Brandon Phillips, it wasn’t his goal.

“We don’t play the game for records and streaks,” he said. “At the time we were trying to figure out how to win baseball games.”

Barney thought he could stick around, but his salary was going up and his OPS wasn’t.

He got traded to the Dodgers in 2014 and played with the Blue Jays in 2016-17. He signed with Texas for the 2018 season, but was released in spring training and decided to call it quits. For one, he wanted some family time. His wife Lindsay started an interval workout business in Portland. His elbow had been bothering him for years. Loose bodies and bone spurs made it painful to play baseball.

“I needed to be with my family,” he said. “I was carrying too much guilt being away from them. I just wasn’t enjoying the game as I was before.”

But recently, at the invitation of some friends, he started playing in men’s baseball league games.

“Finally, you go out there and you do it and you realize what you’re missing and how much you miss something,” he said. “And you realize hey, your body can still do it.”

What’s it like facing Darwin Barney in a men’s league game?

“I’ll tell you what, no one is going to go home and tell their wife they struck me out,” he said. “I’m definitely still choking up with two strikes. So far, so good. If only I could’ve OPS’d 1.5 in the majors like I do here.”

Playing again has Barney thinking about a comeback. He got an MRI in August and was planning on surgery after his golf club’s championship. Once he starts rehabbing in the winter, he wants to put some feelers out there for a Gold Glove second baseman with something left in the tank.

If not, he’ll think about coaching or managing and he’ll keep trying to help the Portland Diamond Project, the group that is representing the city’s interest in getting an MLB team either by expansion or relocation. There’s a lot of life left.

“I’m only 33,” he said.

Jeff Beliveau

Then: Relief pitcher, 4.58 ERA in 22 games as a rookie

Now: Appeared in nine games for Cleveland in 2018. Didn’t pitch in 2019.

Jason Berken

Then: Starting pitcher, acquired on waivers Sept. 7, made four starts, including his final one in the majors on Oct. 1, the Cubs’ 100th loss.

Now: Owner, Impact Sports Academy, De Pere, Wis.

Michael Bowden

Then: Relief pitcher, 2.95 ERA in 30 games after being traded from Boston for Marlon Byrd on April 21

Now: Has pitched in Mexico, the Dodgers’ minor-league system and the Atlantic League this season

Marlon Byrd

Then: Outfielder, played in 13 games before being traded to Boston on April 21

Now: Owner, Float Fitness in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Alberto Cabrera

Then: Reliever, 5.40 ERA in 25 games

Now: Retired

Shawn Camp

Then: Relief pitcher, 3.59 ERA in 80 appearances, which tied for the major-league lead (Reporters still laugh about the time he said, “We’re not talking about pitch selection, Jesse,” to ESPN’s Jesse Rogers.)

Now: Pitching coach, George Mason University

Tony Campana

Then: Outfielder, .607 OPS in 89 games

Now: Outfielder, Sultanes de Monterrey (Mexican League)

Adrian Cardenas

Then: Utility man (.183 batting average in 45 games) and college student

Now: Filmmaker with an MFA from NYU

To the extent that baseball people think about Adrian Cardenas at all, he feels like they might have the wrong idea about him.

“There’s a big misconception that I left the game because I didn’t enjoy it or didn’t like or wasn’t in love with the game,” he said. “I really was and I am, to an extent, able to appreciate it a lot more than I did before.”

Cardenas’ last baseball season, in the majors or otherwise, was in 2012. After the season ended, he released himself from the game.

In his last two years in baseball, Cardenas was also a college student, having enrolled at New York University while still with the Oakland A’s organization. The Phillies were paying for his education, part of the deal he signed as a first-round pick out of Monsignor Pace High School in Florida.

Cardenas finished his undergrad and then enrolled in an MFA program in film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, from which he graduated in 2018.

His first short film, “The Artisan,” which was filmed in his parents’ native Cuba, is on the festival circuit. It’s a 12-minute movie about a man dealing with the anniversary of his wife’s death with the help of his tight-knit village of Gibara.

He’s hoping to be the first person to play both Wrigley Field and the Chicago International Film Festival.

Cardenas filmed the movie using local extras in Cuba in only five days. Much of the pre-production involved dealing with the Cuban government, getting the right permits and shuttling equipment around.

When we last talked at length in 2014 for this ESPN story, Cardenas wasn’t sure what he wanted to do after undergrad, but he thinks he found his true calling.

While he enjoys the solitude of writing, he also likes the camaraderie of a team, so making movies appeals to both sides of his character.

“I’m an only child,” he said. “I enjoy being by myself, but I also played baseball all my life and I like to think of myself as a social person.”

In 2012, Cardenas was already thinking about a transition in his life, but then, all of a sudden, he was in the majors with the Cubs, who had picked him up off waivers in February. He got called up in early May and made his major-league debut in the eighth inning of a May 7 game. He was up for May and most of June and then spent another month in the minors before coming up on July 31. He went down again in mid-August and returned for the last month of the season and his baseball career.

Adrian Cardenas found his next calling after baseball at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. (Justin K. Aller / Getty Images)

“I remember it was a year of extremes for me,” he said. “I accomplished my childhood dream making it to the majors and I was able to have some incredible moments and have incredible experiences while I was there.”

He broke up A.J. Burnett’s no-hitter in an eighth-inning, pinch-hit appearance on July 31 just after getting called up. He remembers making two errors at third base in a 1-0 loss to Pittsburgh in late May.

“I hadn’t played much and Ian Stewart’s wrist was bothering him,” Cardenas said. “I remember Sveum came up and asked, ‘Can you play third?’ I was thinking, ‘I hate third base.’ Fuck it, yeah, I play third. Never in my life had I wanted a game to stop or a ball not to be hit to me, except that time.”

Cardenas had more than an inkling that his start at second base on Oct. 3, in the Cubs’ 162nd game of the season, would be the end of his baseball career. So with one out in the ninth of a tie game at Wrigley Field, he walked to the plate with the winning run in scoring position.

“Going into that at-bat, I was like, ‘Here we go, this will be a good ending for me,’” he said. “It was purely just my own narrative, my own dialogue. And then I struck out. LaHair came up after me and got the game-winning walk-off hit.”

Lendy Castillo

Then: Relief pitcher selected by Cubs in Rule 5 Draft, 7.88 ERA in 13 games

Now: Pitcher, New Jersey Jackals, Canadian-American Association, 6.04 ERA in 23 games

Welington Castillo

Then: Catcher, .754 OPS in 52 games

Now: Catcher, White Sox

Starlin Castro

Then: All-Star shortstop, led the NL in games played (162), at-bats (646) and times caught stealing (13)

Now: Shortstop, Miami Marlins

Jaye Chapman

Then: Relief pitcher, 3.75 ERA in 14 games, acquired in trade with Arodys Vizcaino for Reed Johnson and Paul Maholm on July 30

Now: Financial Advisor, Edward Jones

Steve Clevenger

Then: Catcher, .537 OPS in 69 games

Now: Last played in the Atlantic League in 2017

Casey Coleman

Then: Pitcher, 7.40 ERA in 17 games

Now: Pitched for the Syracuse Mets and Toros de Tijuana in 2019

Manny Corpas

Then: Reliever, 5.01 ERA in 48 games

Now: Reliever, Milwaukee Milkmen, American Association, 4.63 ERA in nine games

Ryan Dempster

Then: Starting pitcher, 2.25 ERA in 16 starts before getting traded to Texas on July 31

Now: MLB Network host; Special assistant to Cubs president Theo Epstein

David DeJesus

Then: Outfielder, .753 OPS in 148 games

Now: Pre and postgame host for Cubs games for NBC Sports Chicago

Blake DeWitt

Then: Infielder, four hits 18 games

Now: Owner, .300 Baseball in Sikeston, Mo.

Rafael Dolis

Then: Relief pitcher, 6.39 ERA in 34 games

Now: Relief pitcher, Hanshin Tigers (Japan Central League)

Matt Garza

Then: Starting pitcher, 3.98 ERA in 18 starts

Now: Retired, active on Twitter

Justin Germano

Then: Pitcher, 6.75 ERA in 13 games (12 starts)

Now: Charter Sales Executive, Victor private jet charter service

Koyie Hill

Then: Catcher, only played 11 games after being purchased from the Reds on May 19, granted free agency on June 17

Now: Working for WS Construction Co., a real estate development firm in Wichita, Kan. 

Alex Hinshaw

Then: Relief pitcher for the Cubs, 135 ERA in 1/3 inning

Now: Business Performance Advisor, Insperity, Portland, Ore.

If one inning symbolized the 2012 Cubs, it was the ninth inning on Aug. 27, a home game against the Brewers. The Cubs were down by two runs, and Alex Hinshaw, picked up off waivers from San Diego on Aug. 19, was called on to start the ninth. 

Hinshaw immediately put two batters on and that brought up Ryan Braun, who proceeded to hit an 0-1 fastball so hard to left field, the ball left the park and rolled down the street. It was, one person who was there told me, the loudest home run they had ever heard.

But Hinshaw’s day wasn’t done. Ex-Cub Aramis Ramirez, in his first year for the Brewers, hit another homer to deep left. Corey Hart made it three in a row with a homer to left-center.

That was it for Hinshaw. For the Cubs and in the majors.

For his Cubs career, he faced six batters and got one out. Thirty players threw a pitch that season for the Cubs and Hinshaw tied Joe Mather, a position player who ended up pitching in that Brewers game, for the fewest official innings with 1/3.

Does Hinshaw remember that game? What do you think?

“It haunts me to this day,” he said. “My last game in the big leagues. What a way to go out. Especially since my career ERA was in the 3s and now it’s in the 5s.”

Seven years later, he remembers what he threw those hitters.

Braun: “Cutter didn’t cut. I threw Ryan Braun a BP fastball right down the middle.”

Ramirez: “I tried to bust him in with a fastball and I got too much of the plate.”

Hart: “Hung a curveball.”

Sometimes, that’s just how it goes.

“After the game, I was obviously not the happiest person in world,” he said. “I had a nice long talk with a bottle. I talked to my wife for a while. I live by something my grandma used to say. ‘Today will be yesterday tomorrow.’ You can’t dwell on it.”

The talk and the drinks helped him sleep. But when he got to Wrigley Field the next day, he was sent to manager Dale Sveum’s little office up the stairs from the clubhouse.

“The first thing Dale told me was, ‘What I’m about to tell you had nothing to do with last night,’” Hinshaw said. “I remember that conversation like it was yesterday.”

Blake Parker was coming off the DL and they needed to send Hinshaw to Iowa. The problem was Iowa’s season was over early — their last series with New Orleans was canceled because of Hurricane Isaac — and the Cubs didn’t want Hinshaw back.

“I was basically free to go home and they said we’re going to pay you for the rest of the season,” he said.

In 2013, Hinshaw went to Toronto and lasted a month with their Triple-A team. After that, he toured the Atlantic League, pitching for three teams.

“I was dealing with the yips, trying to get back to my old arm angle,” he said.

He wanted to give it one more shot in 2014 for his own mental health.

“I wanted to get an opportunity to make it back to affiliated ball, Triple A, to get back to the big leagues to make sure that wasn’t my last game,” he said.

He pitched for two American Association teams in 2014 and while he was sharp in 40 games, he didn’t get any looks. So that was it.

At 31, Hinshaw had no real world experience. Getting rocked at Wrigley wasn’t easy, but figuring out what you’re going to do the rest of your life is even more difficult.

“I will be as candid as I can, that was the hardest damn thing I’ve ever had to do in my life,” he said. “It was completely scary, frustrating, challenging. Every damn descriptive word I can think of. I had to create a new identity for myself and no idea where to do it.”

He brainstormed with his wife and a friend. He got in touch with the Players Association, which found him a career coach, and he took a career assessment test.

“We came to the conclusion that I liked people,” he said, so he went into sales.

He started working as a manager trainee for a sporting goods chain and then moved into business development for a staffing agency in his new home of Portland, Ore. for about a year. After that, he went to work in sales for Konica Minolta for nearly two years. Since April, he’s been a business performance advisor for an HR consulting company called Insperity.

Hinshaw said he wants to talk to the MLBPA about sharing his journey with other players.

“A lot of guys are just lost and don’t know what to do,” he said. “We’ve literally made baseball our life for, god, going on 30 years in some cases. All of a sudden, you have to do something else. It’s scary man.”

Brett Jackson

Then: Center fielder, .644 OPS in 44 games

Now: Consultant, Weather Applied Metrics; copywriter, Atomic D advertising firm

Even under new leadership, Brett Jackson and Josh Vitters, two of the best holdover prospects under the old regime, still held some promise. Jackson, drafted at the end of the first round in 2009, was a college-bred hitter who could play center field.

They got promoted together on Aug. 5, with the season well out of reach. And they both bombed at the major-league level, striking out in a combined 45 percent of their at-bats. And that was basically it for their major league careers.

The moment that defined Jackson’s season was a scary collision with a wall in Pittsburgh on Sept. 7. It messed up his shoulder and cost him a week. He played 13 more games for the Cubs after he returned, but only picked up three singles.

He remembers a helpful clubhouse and he enjoyed working with Sveum. But after he made it, he had to figure out what came next.

“It was the most exciting time of life and at the same time, I think I was experiencing the weight of stepping into my own expectations, stepping into the expectations of the organization, all the while the team was struggling,” he said. “I played really well for a little while and never really lost faith in my ability as a player. Following that injury where I ran into the wall, I tried to come back after that and from that point on, I lost my mojo.”

Brett Jackson, alongside Josh Vitters, once represented the promise that players like Kris Bryant and Javy Báez eventually brought to Chicago. (Brian D. Kersey / Getty Images)

Without his mojo, Jackson still stuck around Triple-A Iowa in 2013 and most of 2014 and got to see Kris Bryant and Javy Báez come through. He played with Manny Ramirez, which was a career highlight in itself. He went to his hometown organization, the San Francisco Giants, and played for their Triple-A team before a torn labrum made him think about his future.

“I was looking at surgery and recovery and trying to make a comeback, while at the same time, being ready to explore life without baseball,” he said. “There’s sort of a death of an idea of who you are in that process.”

Jackson had a degree from Cal-Berkeley and his father was an entrepreneur in the Bay Area. He had other options, not that it was easy to let go. 

“That was certainly a process,” he said of getting over his baseball career. “There’s a stage of mourning and shedding of an old version of yourself.”

His new path led him to a brief acting gig on the TV show “Pitch” and to the world of start-ups, which includes his wife’s company Après, a plant-based workout recovery drink. (You can see Brett modeling on the website.)

“So, it’s been a wild ride,” he said. “For the first time, I’m looking back at baseball as feeling like it was a lifetime ago or another life.”

He recently started a job as a copywriter with an ad agency in San Francisco and he’s consulting for a sports-related start-up, Weather Applied Metrics (WAM), a company that could be more valuable to the Cubs outfield than Jackson was.

WAM was founded by meteorologists and an engineer and it uses technology to study how wind and weather affect projectiles moving in the air. You don’t need to have familiarity with “computational fluid dynamics” to figure out how this tech can be used in sports like baseball and football.

As an outfielder at Wrigley Field, Jackson was used to gauging the wind the old-fashioned way, looking at the flags.

“What happens in a stadium is so much more complex,” he said. “The 3D weather, if you look at some of the modeling, it blew my mind. Wrigley will be a really interesting stadium to see how much it swirls and moves and changes throughout a game.”

Jackson said WAM is currently working with MLB and a few specific teams to implement this technology. Jackson foresees teams using the tech to pitch free agents whose swings might benefit from their stadium’s weather patterns.

Three-D models are about as much baseball as Jackson takes in these days. In 2016, he went from not wanting to watch the Cubs in the postseason at all to taking some solace in their run.

“At first I was heartbroken to not be part of it,” he said. “It turned out to be such a cathartic moment to watch the guys I knew and came up with in the minor leagues hoisting the trophy. It was pretty spectacular.”

What was it like being a big-time Cubs prospect in the days before 2015?

“It’s really hard to put into words that entire experience,” he said. “You’re 24 years old, facing this kind of obscure concept of what it means to be in the spotlight and to be sort of an impactful person in the story of Chicago Cubs and you’re like, taking on that idea. Or at least I took on the idea a lot. I think a lot of us did. I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but the person, the player I was took on that idea, so I really wanted to commit myself to being someone who could impact the trajectory of the organization.”

Reed Johnson

Then: Outfielder, hit .302 in 76 games for Cubs, traded to Atlanta on July 30

Now: Retired in Temecula, Calif., growing grapes for winemakers on his property and running a youth baseball academy

Bryan LaHair

Then: All-Star first baseman/outfielder, .784 OPS in 130 games

Now: Manager, Billings Mustangs, Rookie League affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds

A 28-year-old minor-league free agent got called up late in the 2011 season and had eight extra-base hits in 69 plate appearances. That got him another shot in 2012 and he made the most of it.

From April 7 through May 15, Bryan LaHair hit 10 homers for the 2012 Cubs, slashing a ridiculous .361/.453/.722.

The magic faded after that. From May 16 through the All-Star break, he hit .220/.278/.341, and by that point, LaHair was already supplanted by Rizzo at first base. Still, he was named an All-Star, voted in by his peers. No one can take that away.

“The whole rest of his life he’s an All-Star,” Hoyer said.

LaHair entered the All-Star Game at Kauffman Stadium in the bottom of the seventh inning, taking over first base from David Freese. He got his one plate appearance in the top of the ninth with the NL already winning, and he grounded out to shortstop to end the inning. But it was all gravy.

“It was almost like in that one moment, all that hard work I put in, seeps in,” he said. “Everything was truly worth it. My brother was on the field with me during the home run derby. It was something we dreamt about. Something we always thought could be possible, and not something we thought would be possible. But it happened.”

In the second half, reality set in, as it often does. LaHair started just 25 games and hit two homers, though he did homer and drive in the winning run with a walk-off single in the Cubs’ final game of the season. He went to Japan the next season and played 2014 in the Cleveland system before two seasons in the Atlantic League.

LaHair watched Rizzo and the Cubs win the World Series at Estadio Tomateros de Culiacán on a brand-new videoboard during a rain delay in the Mexican winter league.

After he ended his career in 2017, he sent out resumes to get into coaching. LaHair was named the hitting coach for the 2018 Billings Mustangs, the Reds’ Pioneer League affiliate, and just spent the 2019 season as their manager. Looking back at that 2012, he said he learned a lot from both Sveum and first base coach Dave McKay about how to manage and coach.

“I was always big on picking my coaches’ brains, gathering information,” he said. “This is definitely something I always wanted to attempt.”

Sveum laughed when he was told LaHair was managing.

“He’s in my fantasy football league and he never told me that!” Sveum said.

LaHair went from minor-league free agent to All-Star thanks to a good six weeks in the majors. It’s every bush leaguer’s dream and he lived it.

“I’m super grateful for the opportunity I was given,” LaHair said.

Blake Lalli

Then: Catcher/first baseman, two hits in six games in May

Now: Manager, Jackson Generals, Double-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks

Rodrigo Lopez

Then: Relief pitcher, 5.68 ERA in four games

Now: Spanish-language radio broadcaster for the Arizona Diamondbacks

Paul Maholm

Then: Starting pitcher, 3.77 ERA in 20 starts before being traded to Atlanta on July 30

Now: Retired in Mississippi, active on Twitter

Carlos Mármol

Then: Relief pitcher, 3.42 ERA and 20 saves in 61 games 

Now: Retired

Scott Maine

Then: Relief pitcher, 4.79 ERA in 21 games before being claimed on waivers by Cleveland

Now: Last pitched in 2018 for Ottawa of Canadian-American Association. Took season off for paternity leave.

Joe Mather

Then: Third baseman/outfielder, .581 OPS in 103 games

Now: Minor-league field and hitting coordinator, Arizona Diamondbacks organization

Blake Parker

Then: Relief pitcher, 6.00 ERA in seven games

Now: Relief pitcher, Philadelphia Phillies, 5.40 ERA in 16 games after being released from Minnesota

Brooks Raley

Then: Starting pitcher, 8.14 ERA in five starts

Now: Starting pitcher for Lotte Giants (South Korea)

Anthony Recker

Then: Catcher, three hits in nine games after being traded from Oakland for Blake Lalli on Aug. 27

Now: Did some pre and postgame work for NBC Sports Bay Area in 2019

Anthony Rizzo

Then: First baseman, .805 OPS in 87 games

Now: World Series champion first baseman

Anthony Rizzo was the talk of Cubs fans that spring and early summer, as the team went 25-48 to start the season while he slugged nearly .700 at Triple-A Iowa. His arrival in mid-June was the first positive moment of the season, a shot in the arm for the fanbase and the team. But Rizzo, the first piece of the puzzle Epstein was assembling, still had to perform, something he didn’t do in his big-league debut with San Diego the year before.

“Walking into Wrigley for the first time, eyes wide open, being so young,” Rizzo said. “I remember Demp pulled me aside and said, ‘You’re here to help us win. I know we’re not very good, but you’re here to help us win and do you.’ That was really comforting for me. 

“Everyone was so nice to me and helped me to settle in. Even (Bryan) LaHair, he’s coming off All-Star first half and he switches positions and there’s no hard feelings.”

The baby-faced Anthony Rizzo hasn’t seemed to age much despite the turnover he’s seen since that 2012 season. (Brian Kersey / Getty Images)

In his first 29 games through July 31, he had eight homers and a .938 OPS. In 87 games overall, he slashed .285/.342/.463 with 15 homers. While he slumped the next season, he took off in 2014 and hasn’t looked back.

He has made three All-Star teams and won two Gold Gloves. His work with his family foundation has made a major difference in the lives of children with cancer. In essence, he became everything that Epstein and Hoyer dreamed when they drafted him, traded for him and traded for him again.

“He was able to make a pretty pivotal change in his approach and his swing and it obviously worked out,” Sveum said. “He’s been a really good hitter for a number of years now. You got to give him credit for making an adjustment.”

Rizzo isn’t the overly sentimental type, but he recently turned 30 and he’s noticed how many ex-teammates are now coaches around the league. By the last year of his contract, he’ll be the same age that David DeJesus was when he came up. One thing is for sure, he doesn’t want to ever play for a 101-loss team again.

“I probably didn’t notice everything around me because I was naive and oblivious,” he said. “But I think it would be a lot harder now to be on that team than as a rookie.”

Chris Rusin

Then: Starting pitcher, 6.37 ERA in seven starts

Now: Starting pitcher, Colorado Rockies organization, Albuquerque Isotopes (pitched two games in relief for Colorado in 2019)

James Russell

Then: Relief pitcher, 3.25 ERA in 77 appearances

Now: Starting pitcher for Toros de Tijuana (Mexican League)

Jeff Samardzija

Then: First-year starting pitcher, 3.81 ERA in 28 starts

Now: Starting pitcher, San Francisco Giants

In 2012, Samardzija got out of the Cubs bullpen and was part of the rotation from the beginning. He made 28 starts before being shut down in early September after more than doubling his innings total (88 to 174 2/3) from the previous season.

At 27, he needed to show the Cubs and himself that he could be counted on every fifth day. At the time, he wasn’t worried about his place in the rebuild.

“When you’re so young, you’re just worried about sticking and being successful and, ‘How am I going to do this for seven more years until free agency?’ and so on and so forth,” he said. “The older I got, the more aware I was of the situation going on as a whole throughout the league.”

But now that he looks back on it, he sees how the situation screwed with players’ heads and created an environment that sucked the fun out of the game. When Samardzija got called up to help the 2008 team out of the bullpen, he joined a team of veterans with one thing on their mind: winning. Now, everyone was focused on themselves.

“I think I was oblivious and a little naive to the business side when I was younger, because it seemed the only focus was winning games,” he said. “No one in the locker room was talking contracts, talking trades, talking extensions. All the talk in the locker room my first couple years was about the game. ‘How do we throw better curveballs? How do we get this guy out?’ Things like that. And all of a sudden it just changes to everyone talking about the gossip of the game, which is tough, because you need to spend that time worrying about your opponent if you want to win in the big leagues.”

After transitioning from reliever to starter, Jeff Samardzija solidified himself in the Cubs rotation. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)

Winning, he found out, wasn’t the front office’s priority at that juncture. Few players get the business of baseball like Samardzija, who bet on himself as a free agent and won, but back then, he just wanted to win.

“For me, it was tough because we were in such a big market and I kind of assumed when you’re in a big market with that much revenue that every year you’re going to somewhat go out there and try to contend,” he said. “It didn’t appear that way in 2012.”

While it was a lost year in terms of wins and losses, it was a pivotal season for Samardzija, who showed he could be a frontline starter. He worked with new pitching coach Chris Bosio to make that transition. 

“He’d always tell me, ‘I need the bad Samardzija today,’” he said. “Not bad as in not performing, but like just a bad dude. He wanted me to be angry and be fired up and he really instilled that in me. You have to bring that every time you’re out there because the other team is and if you don’t you’re going to get caught off guard.”

For Samardzija, who was around for most of the rebuild until getting dealt for Addison Russell on July 4, 2014, the names and years blend together. At one point in our conversation, he thought Jake Arrieta was on the 2012 team. He’s run into other players from those rebuilding teams and forgotten they played together.

“When you play with 56 guys in a season, it’s tough, man,” Samardzija said. “It’s not where guys are around for a month and a half and you get to know them. Sometimes guys are around for six days and that’s it.”

Dave Sappelt

Then: Outfielder, .800 OPS in 26 games

Now: Last played in Mexico in 2018. Active on Twitter.

Miguel Socolovich

Then: Relief pitcher, 6.40 ERA in six games

Now: Relief pitcher, Guerreros de Oaxaca (Mexican League)

Alfonso Soriano

Then: Outfielder, .821 OPS, 32 home runs, 108 RBIs in 151 games

Now: Retired in Florida

Full disclosure: I didn’t talk to Soriano for this story, but that didn’t stop his old teammates from showering him with praise.

“I don’t think I played with a better veteran player in my entire career,” Jackson said.

“His energy in the clubhouse every day was amazing, his work ethic was amazing,” LaHair said. 

“He was playing hurt all the time, playing through stuff,” Rizzo said. “He’s a professional and it made you want to be better because you see what he did, how hard he worked and how much he loved the game.”

Epstein and Hoyer didn’t know what they’d get from Soriano, who was the Cubs’ free-agent prize going into the 2007 season, but they found out he was a perfect teammate and mentor to their young players. He also improved defensively under McKay, who turned Soriano into a capable left fielder. Soriano was so grateful for the tutelage, McKay told me, he tried to pay him. In cash.

One of Cardenas’ favorite stories from that year was from a May 11 game in Milwaukee. Soriano had told him to hurry and shower afterward because he was taking a crew of people out to dinner. But the game went 13 innings and lasted more than five hours. (The Cubs lost 8-7.) Cardenas thought the dinner would be postponed. Then Soriano walked up to him already wearing a suit.

“He comes over and sees that I haven’t showered yet, I’m still in a towel and says, ‘Adrian what’s going on? Get ready.’ I’m like, ‘Sori, where are we going to? It’s after midnight.’ In classic Soriano fashion, he says, ‘Come on Papi, do you know who I am? Get ready.’”

Either the manager or the chef opened up the steakhouse for the group and they stayed for hours, eating, talking and laughing. That is the Soriano that his ex-teammates tell their friends about. This one is too:

“One time on the plane we’re playing cards and someone was asking for change,” Cardenas said. “They said, ‘Sori, you got change for $100?’ And Sori said, ‘Papi, 100s are change, babe.’”

Geovany Soto

Then: Catcher, .631 OPS in 52 games before being traded to Texas on July 31

Now: Retired after 13-year career

Ian Stewart

Then: Third baseman, .627 OPS in 55 games

Now: Baseball instructor in Asheville, N.C.

Dale Sveum

Then: First-year manager of the Cubs

Now: Bench coach for the Kansas City Royals

What’s it like to manage a team that wasn’t put together as much as primed to be taken apart?

“Well, I mean it is what it is,” Sveum said. “I’ve been in the game for a long enough time, but not in that position where you’re running everything. You’ve got new people every day. You’re doing everything you possibly can to get some guys traded and keep them from going out there and pitching an extra inning. You’re trying to keep their numbers down, so you can trade people as well as win some games. Those two things don’t go hand in hand.”

Or to be more succinct: “There might be gold at the end of the fricking rainbow, but you’re still losing every day.”

Sveum is nearing the end of another 100-loss season with the Kansas City Royals, but in 2012, he was the guy in charge of a 101-loss team.

“I think we claimed a guy every other day,” he said. “I remember sitting with (pitching coach Chris) Bosio every day. ‘Can we get three innings from our starter? Because I have six innings in the bullpen.’”

“I always said the hardest part of that day was after the game going down and talking to Dale,” Hoyer said. “The coaching staff is wearing it, man. They’re preparing all day, they’re working their butts off and going down there knowing they just don’t have enough ammunition to compete.”

Sveum was hired after a very involved process to find the first manager of the Epstein era. He didn’t go into the season expecting a playoff push. But this was a different situation.

“When I took the job, I know this was a possibility,” he said. “It’s not a mystery. You look across the diamond and they’re better than you at catcher, first base, second base, third base, center field, bullpen. We did have decent starting pitching for a little while before we started trading everybody. We didn’t have a closer. Carlos Marmol struggled and then James Russell and Shawn Camp stepped up and did as good as they could have. I ended up using them too much.”

Camp, at 36, pitched a team-high 80 games that season. Russell, a decade younger, pitched 77 games. No one else was close. 

Beyond the day-to-day duties of the manager, Sveum was still a hitting coach at heart, so he spent a lot of time working with his young players. Some took to him. Others didn’t.

“He and I always talked hitting,” Barney said. “We’d be in his hotel room at 1 and 2 in the morning talking hitting. I was the one who was always tinkering. He was always trying to help.”

Making it in the majors is all about adaptation. It’s what separates the 10th-round picks who make it from the first-rounders who don’t. 

“The most feared word in the dictionary is change,” Sveum said. “Whether it’s changing jobs, changing the city you live in. People don’t like change.”

Sveum was fired after the 2013 season as Epstein preached a change in attitude from the top. You can have tough love, he said then, but there has to be love, a shot at Sveum’s no-nonsense style.

His career managerial record is 127-197. The losses stick to his name forever. With that in mind, Sveum, who won a ring before the Cubs as the hitting coach on the 2015 Royals, doubts he’ll get another shot at the top job.

“I haven’t had an interview since,” he said.

Sveum isn’t the type to complain, so he’ll stick to coaching hitters and being the commissioner of a very involved fantasy football league, where no one complains about his tough love in his weekly emails.

Luis Valbuena

Then: Third baseman/second baseman, .650 OPS in 90 games after being picked up on waivers from Toronto on April 4

Now: Died in a car accident on Dec. 6, 2018

Josh Vitters

Then: Third baseman, .395 OPS in 36 games

Now: Sat out 2019 season, pondering a return to baseball

Before talking about 2012 and what’s going on in his life in 2019, Vitters, the third overall pick of the 2007 draft, said he needed to start at the beginning.

“When I was 9 years old…”

Vitters said he had a ruptured appendix as a kid and there were a lot of complications and surgeries that followed. As he got older and kept playing baseball, he noticed his right hip was a little tight, but figured that was just how his body worked. He still thrived, becoming a power hitter in high school and getting a $3.2 million signing bonus from the Cubs. 

But after his career flatlined, after he quit the independent league circuit and went back home to California, he was haunted by the disappearance of his power swing. Why did he feel like crap? At times, he blamed the ADHD medicine or his eyesight, but there was something else there.

So, he said he went to an abdominal surgeon recently in California and got checked out. What they found was some “gnarly scar tissue.” The technical term for that is Arthrofibrosis, an injury or trauma complication which limits joint motion, among other things. He had an answer, if not the answer, and that’s changed everything.

Josh Vitters is feeling like a boss again. Could he make a comeback? (Denis Poroy / Getty Images)

That was cleaned out in an outpatient surgery. Vitters sent me the before-and-after pictures, and while I’m not a doctor, the difference in the photos was impossible to miss.

“Now, I feel like a boss again,” he said. “Holy shit, I feel like an athlete again. Everything is coming back.”

That Vitters didn’t make it as a hitter confused a lot of talent evaluators along the way. There were no clear warning signs that he wouldn’t make it.

He still slugged .513 in 110 games with Triple-A Iowa in 2012, but he only managed two homers in 36 games with the Cubs after making his debut in August that year. He was hurt for most of 2013 and by 2014, his power had dimmed dramatically with a .339 slugging percentage in 112 games.

He didn’t play in 2015 and in his last three years playing in the independent leagues, he slugged just .314.

“I felt like shit going to the park every day,” he said.

So does he think the Arthrofibrosis affected him? A thousand times yes.

“I think it did 100 percent,” he said. “It really kind of destroyed my power, even all of my explosiveness, the way I run, everything. I just thought I wasn’t working out hard enough. So I went harder, harder, harder, and never got better. Now it’s like I’m feeling I can breathe completely on my right side. It’s like holy shit, what the fuck was I doing that whole time?”

Vitters is still in California, trying to figure out his next step, but at 30 and after a year off, he’s ready to try a comeback.

“I love the game of baseball,” he said. “I don’t want to stop playing. I think I can play at a really high level. I can feel it coming back. I’m going to be a beast again.”

But even knowing what he does now, Vitters thinks his problems with the Cubs in 2012 were more in his head than his body. He never felt comfortable with Sveum. The mood around the team affected his precarious mental state.

“I wasn’t as confident as I had been in the past,” he said. “I still felt pretty good up there for the most part. I didn’t feel terrible. Looking back, I feel like I was definitely not helping the situation out in the right way.”

Once he got to the independent leagues, however, he was searching for an old self that he wasn’t sure existed anymore. At one point, he said, his family sent him a letter with pictures showing him what his old swing looked like in high school.

“I was like, shit, I can’t do that anymore,” he said. 

What was it like to go up to the plate knowing how to hit, but being unable to do it?

“I was seeing baseballs that looked like watermelons,” he said. “I was like, ‘Damn, I want to crush these balls,’ and I swing and I get jammed. It was like, ‘What the fuck?’”

He’s not bitter about how it ended with the Cubs, and he’ll always remember the conversation he had with Epstein when he learned he got called up. After all, how many first-round picks never get a chance to fail in the big leagues?

“Theo told me I really earned my call-up the old fashioned way,” he said. “And that really made me happy.”

Chris Volstad

Then: Starting pitcher, 6.31 ERA in 21 starts

Now: Last pitched for White Sox in 2018; co-owner, Civil Society Brewing Co., Jupiter and West Palm Beach, Fla.

Randy Wells

Then: Pitcher, 5.34 ERA in 12 games

Now: Project manager, USA Fire Protection, suburban Chicago

Kerry Wood

Then: Relief pitcher, 8.31 ERA in 10 games

Now: Cubs special advisor; founder, Wood Family Foundation

Travis Wood

Then: Made 26 starts with a 4.27 ERA

Now: Not retired, but last pitched in 2017. When his wife Brittany was asked what he’s been doing, she sent a picture of Travis, a World Series champion, smiling, shirtless and watching TV, content with a cold drink.

(Top photo: Rob Carr / Getty Images)