The Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres jointly announce today that Jed Hoyer and Jason McLeod will leave the Padres, effective immediately, to accept positions with the Cubs. The Cubs have agreed to send the Padres a player to be named later as compensation.
Both the Cubs and the Padres intend to hold press conferences after the World Series. The Cubs intend to announce Hoyer as Executive Vice President/General Manager and McLeod as Senior Vice President/Scouting and Player Development, while the Padres intend to announce Josh Byrnes as Hoyer's successor.
Source: Cubs.Com
As you can see in that excerpt, the Cubs will send the Padres compensation. The compensation will be one player, which is believed to be a low-level minor leaguer.
Hoyer became the Padres' general manager in 2009, and immediately hired McLeod to his staff to be assistant general manger. This is after the two worked under Epstein for many years with the Red Sox, and were members of the Boston front office during the 2004 and 2007 World Series title years. They're each very good friends of Epstein, and come from the same baseball school of thought as him.
Oneri Fleita(Vice President of Player Personnel/Farm Director) and Tim Wilken(Scouting Director) will keep their jobs in the Cubs' front office, and will report to McLeod(who will report to Hoyer). The Cubs have had one of the smallest front offices in baseball, and Epstein wants a very large group. The more good baseball minds around, the better.
Much will be made about Hoyer's job title, as the general manager is traditionally the one responsible for transactions, working the phones, etc. But let's be honest- Epstein is essentially the general manager. Epstein's going to be in charge of what goes down, although he may save much of the day-to-day "general manager" duties for Hoyer. But any significant decisions will ultimately be made by Epstein. I view Hoyer as Epstein's "assistant" again, but had he left a "general manager" job with the Padres for an "assistant general manager" title with the Cubs, that would've made him look bad.
Hoyer won 90 games in his first season as the general manager with the Padres, after the team won just 75 games the year before. Of course, they won just 72 games this season, but that was after he was forced to trade away Adrian Gonzalez(to Epstein and the Red Sox, fittingly) because the team did not have the money to keep Gonzalez long term.
McLeod's draft history while with Boston was extremely impressive. Players selected during his time there include Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz, Daniel Bard, Jed Lowrie, and Justin Masterson. In McLeod's first four seasons with the Red Sox, Baseball America ranked the Red Sox's drafts in the top five three times.
Additionally, Baseball America's Jim Callis says that the Padres' farm system will be ranked in the top five or so in baseball when their rankings are released in the winter. With Epstein, Hoyer, and McLeod now aboard, you have to like the Cubs' chances of getting a similar ranking over the next few years.
