Chicago Cubs championship architect Theo Epstein steps down as president; Jed Hoyer taking over

Theo Epstein, who helmed baseball operations departments that helped break century-long championship droughts for the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs and ushered in an era of precocious, Ivy League-educated baseball executives, will resign as Cubs president of baseball operations on Tuesday. 

The Cubs announced that Epstein's longtime lieutenant, Jed Hoyer, will take over as their top baseball operations official. Epstein's resignation comes one year sooner than anticipated, as he indicated he'd step aside once his contract expired after 2021.

But the Cubs are due for a re-tooling, perhaps even a full rebuild, and Epstein said in a statement released by the club he felt more comfortable leaving those decisions in the hands of Hoyer, who will be around to face their ramifications.

"Now is the right time rather than a year from now," says Epstein. "The organization faces a number of decisions this winter that carry long-term consequences; those types of decisions are best made by someone who will be here for a long period rather than just one more year.

"Jed has earned this opportunity and is absolutely the right person to take over this baseball operation at such an important time."

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Though the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies currently have openings for top baseball officials, Epstein, in a letter to colleagues and friends obtained by USA TODAY Sports, did not indicate an immediate desire to pursue those openings.

Though Epstein holds other interests in both the charitable and political realm, he also becomes the game's most desirable free agent executive. His initial five-year deal with the Cubs was worth $18.5 million; since then, the executive bar has been reset by Los Angeles Dodgers president Andrew Friedman, who signed a five-year, $35 million deal in 2015, and Epstein himself, who received a five-year extension in 2016 worth more than $40 million. 

"I do plan on having a third chapter leading a baseball organization someday, though I do not expect it to be next year," Epstein wrote, also indicating he'd like to join an ownership group in the future. 

Epstein, who rose to prominence when the Red Sox hired him as a 28-year-old general manager in November 2002, helped deliver Boston its first World Series title since 1918 two years later, largely buoyed by Epstein's both splashy and subtle acquisitions of stalwarts like Curt Schilling, David Ortiz, Keith Foulke and Kevin Millar. The Red Sox also won a championship in 2007 before Epstein parted with the club following the 2011 season.

Tasked in October 2011 to engineer a championship club in Chicago, Epstein took a different tack, tearing down the longtime "lovable losers" to engineer a full rebuild. With longtime assistants Hoyer and amateur scouting czar Jason McLeod at his side, Epstein's department hit big in the trade and draft markets, dealing for Jake Arrieta and Anthony Rizzo while expending high draft picks on Kris Bryant (2013) and Kyle Schwarber (2014).

They helped form the core of a club that reached the playoffs in five of the past six years, reaching the game's zenith with a World Series championship in 2016. Yet after advancing to the 2017 NLCS, the club has floundered a bit and now arrives at a reckoning. 

Lefty Jon Lester is a free agent. Bryant, Rizzo, Schwarber and All-Star shortstop Javier Baez all become free agents after 2021, after a year in which owner Tom Ricketts claimed the franchise and industry suffered "biblical" losses related to the global pandemic. 

Another teardown may soon be in order. And Epstein's next build-out will come somewhere other than Chicago.

Now 46, Epstein will re-enter an industry that his success largely transformed. Epstein's 2002 hiring in Boston just a few years removed from Yale stunned the sport. But a year later, the release of Moneyball and the game's increasing reliance on analytics combined with Epstein's success suddenly made the Ivy League whiz kid, for better or worse, the archetype of a GM.

Nearly two decades later, the game continues to evolve, though certainly not to a point where there's no place for the man who changed it so much.

"I have seen first-hand the profound impact a baseball team, especially a championship team, can make on its community," Epstein wrote to his colleagues. "I would love to find a way to serve the game that has given me so much and am pursuing a few possible avenues to do just that." 

Contributing: Bob Nightengale