Epstein puts his new team in place

Pick your favorite power trio, whether it be Cream, Rush or ZZ Top.

Scratch that.

None of the three rock stars up onstage Tuesday at Wrigley Field is probably old enough to know who any of those bands are.

But one band of baseball wunderkinds is definitely back together again.

Maestro Theo Epstein, the Cubs new president of baseball operations, officially called things to order as he introduced Jed Hoyer as the team's new general manager and Jason McLeod as senior vice president of scouting and player development.

The theme of the day wasn't lost on Hoyer.

“We've heard that band reference a few times,” the 37-year-old said. “These guys actually have musical talent. So I'm just going to play the triangle, I guess.”

Epstein, Hoyer and McLeod all worked together with the Boston Red Sox as they built world-championship teams in 2004 and 2007.

They're now in charge of righting a Chicago Cubs franchise that has fallen on hard times. The chemistry among the three seems apparent. They all seem to be on the same page, musically speaking, of how they want the new organization to run.

“Last Tuesday, I talked about how a big part of my job was to build a baseball operations department that was progressive, effective and united,” the 37-year-old Epstein said.

The Cubs introduced Epstein to Chicago last week, and Tuesday was clearly Hoyer's day.

Even though Hoyer has just two years of GM experience, 2010 and 2011 with the San Diego Padres, Epstein said Hoyer “has been thinking like a GM for a long time.”

“In my opinion, he's as dynamic an operator at the major-league level as there is in the game,” Epstein said. “He has a deep understanding of the baseball landscape, both on and off the field, and a brilliant, analytical mind, often thinking two or three steps ahead of everybody else, or at least of ahead of me.”

So what can Cubs fans take away from it all and what do these hirings mean for the organization as a whole?

Epstein said Hoyer would have “traditional general-manager responsibilities here in a contributing and supervisory role in all aspects of baseball operations, including day-to-day management of the big-league club.”

It appears Epstein and Hoyer will collaborate on the fate of field manager Mike Quade, who should learn his fate within a week, Epstein said.

MacLeod, 39, will oversee holdovers Oneri Fleita (player development) and Tim Wilken (scouting) in a beefed up front office. Randy Bush, who served as assistant to former GM Jim Hendry, will return to his job as assistant GM.

“Jason McLeod is the rarest commodity in the industry, in my opinion,” Epstein said. “He's an impact evaluator of baseball talent.”

The themes of the day coming from all three men were those of “scouting and player development.”

Although Epstein and his associates have gained a reputation as being stats freaks, each man stressed that their main thrust would be on “information,” whether it comes from analyzing numbers or listening to their scouts in the field.

“I believe that in order to have success in this game, the foundation has to be scouting and player development,” Hoyer said. “There is no shortcut. There is no magic bullet. You have to have a good farm system. You have to have great scouts. All three of us believe in that philosophy wholeheartedly.”

Hoyer would not divulge what the Cubs' player-payroll or baseball-operations budgets would be — and they plan to keep those numbers close to the vest — but he said he did not view signing expensive free agents as the primary path to the ultimate goal.

“I think, in general, you want free agency to be complementary,” he said. “You want get to the point where you have a great farm system. Occasionally, you have a hole you need to fill, an area of impact, and you can go out and find it. “Relying on external solutions to building winning baseball team is a bad idea, and it's something we need to get past. But most importantly, and I know Theo said this other day, and I would reiterate it, but the key it free agency is making sure you're paying for future performance. There's no reason to pay for someone's resume.”

That might seem an indication that the Cubs won't be players for big-ticket first basemen Albert Pujols or Prince Fielder, but Hoyer wouldn't flatly rule out anything.

Hoyer said he's well aware of the reputation his crew has earned as a stats-oriented bunch in determining how to project future performance.

“One of the things you'll find with me and certainly with Theo and Jason is that people try to paint us in different corners,” he said. “To me, it's about information, whether it's scouting, whether it's quantitative, whether it's medical, background information. At that point, you can make a determination and take your best guess whether that player has good years left.”

That said, he seemed able to take in stride the narrow reputations he, Epstein and McLeod have earned despite their success in the past.

“It doesn't bug me,” Hoyer said. “You'd be missing out on so much if you just focused on the quantitative part of it. To me, it's all about information, getting as much as you can and ... coming to consensus. Where I am on the scale is something I hope you'll never figure out because I want to be right in the middle.”

Ÿ Follow Bruce Miles on Twitter @BruceMiles2112.