The Chicago Cubs have signed two former players, but not to play baseball. The team announced that Chris Denorfia and Matt Murton have been hired to roles in the front office.
Denorfia last played in MLB in 2015 with the Cubs, which happened to be the final season of his 10-year career. He'll be a special assistant to Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer. Meanwhile, Murton is back in the organization as a baseball operations assistant.
Murton spent the first 3.5 years with the Cubs before he was traded to the Oakland A's in 2008, in the six-player deal that saw Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin head to Chicago and Josh Donaldson, Eric Patterson and Sean Gallagher along with Murton go to Oakland.
Murton played in Japan for six years and was a hitting machine. He broke Ichiro's single-season hitting record in 2010, and became the 16th foreign player to eclipse the 1,000 hit mark in Japan.
The Cubs haven't been shy about hiring former MLB players to front office jobs. The team's current first base coach, Will Venable, was originally brought tp the organization as an assistant to the president/GM before he was picked to be the first base coach after 2017. There's also David Ross, who is diving deeper into his front office responsibilities with the Cubs this year. It seems as though this front office has been very proactive in giving ex MLB players an avenue to continue working in baseball. A little more than a week ago, Jon Heyman reported the Cubs tried to hire three other former players to be a coach for Joe Maddon. One of those names was Aaron Boone, who was eventually hired by the New York Yankees to be their manager. Former Cubs player Mark DeRosa and Raul Ibanez were the other two tabbed by the Cubs front office that feels they can be future managers.
Loading comments...