Chicago Cubs' Scouting Director Tim Wilken Opens Up About the Organization

(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

TW: As we get closer to the playoffs, around two to three weeks before playoff time, we all get together and assign a certain amount of scouts to clubs we may be playing in the playoffs. We have different two and three man crews and they’re supposed to notice tendencies and things like that.

I’m just as disappointed and frustrated as most of the fans in Chicago. It’s something we’re going to keep trying to improve upon. We didn’t have any answers, but hopefully we’ll be able to improve ourselves in 2009.

DH: It seems like the other teams have been able to find all of the weaknesses in the Cubs' hitters, and it didn’t seem to be that way the other way around.

TW: I don’t know if it’s so much that their scouts found it as it’s we just didn’t hit the ground running in either of those playoffs. There’s no excuses there.

There are books that each club builds on each particular player and the organizations that they may face. It’s a matter of executing pitches, executing as a hitter, and we didn’t do that. They pitched our hitter’s right, and we didn’t do the job.

I don’t know that one scouting department out did another one; I just think it’s a case that we didn’t perform. We will get better at it, and that’s the only way I can retort to that question.

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