Accustomed as they have been lately to operatic failure, it must come as a shock to Chicago Cubs fans to find that early in this off-season, the team has already done the three most important things it needed to do, and in a remarkably, perhaps even suspiciously, competent manner. They fired boneheaded skipper Dusty Baker and replaced him immediately with a qualified manager, Lou Piniella; they resigned free agent third baseman Aramis Ramirez to a reasonable contract, and they brought back pitcher Kerry Wood on an incentive-based contract that positions him to be the team’s closer this coming year. With its decade’s allotment of reasonable moves thus exhausted, the Cubs can no doubt be expected to trade ace Carlos Zambrano for Brian Bannister or something along those lines, but in the meantime, the team actually looks to be in good shape.

For readers who recall I was hardly enthused about the possibility of Piniella managing the Yankees — I called him a blowhard and a fraud, among other things — praise for him might seem a bit surprising. What’s changed since then? Nothing’s changed about the man. I remain unimpressed by Piniella’s tenure in Tampa Bay, where he seemed to be surprised to find himself managing a team full of prospects and washouts, and I remain unimpressed by how little he ultimately managed to do with some staggeringly talented teams in Seattle. What’s changed is the situation. Piniella may be a fraud, but he’s much less of one than the man he’s replacing. The bar is simply lower in Chicago than it is in New York.

Dusty Baker was incapable of resisting things like refraining from playing utility men full time over better options, or blaming his team’s woes on their lack of a left-handed batting practice pitcher. Piniella’s reputation is inflated, but he’s a competent major league manager who will play his best players and put some effort into motivating and leading them, rather than sulking and moping about the unfairness of life. There’s also probably something to the idea that it’s wise to replace a failed manager with someone who has the opposite style, and Piniella’s fiery ways are clearly the opposite of Baker’s laid-back style. For the Cubs, this was a good move.

The next most important item on the team’s agenda this winter was retaining Ramirez, a 28-year-old third baseman who’s been, since he came to Chicago in 2003, one of the best righthanded power hitters in baseball, and was probably the best position player on the market this year. Signing him for five years at a bit over $14 million annually was something the team simply had to do — doing what must be done has not always been the Cubs’ strength, though. There are holes in Ramirez’s game — he’s not the most durable player in the game and he’s an occasionally indifferent and often inept fielder — but with him, Zambrano, and first baseman Derrek Lee, the Cubs have a base of star talent to rival that of any team in the National League, the sort that could allow them to make a quick turnaround after a disastrous season. Applaud the team for making the obvious move and managing not to botch it.

Finally, the team is keeping Wood, which could prove as important as either of these other two moves. He’s been an enormous disappointment over the years, mainly because he couldn’t stay healthy, but a lot of that has to be laid at the team’s feet. Between rushing him back from various injuries, overpitching him when he was healthy, and refusing to see that he’s simply incapable of handling the workload of a starter, they did him no favors. Bringing him back as a starter is a clear sign that they recognize the mistakes they’ve made and are now less focused on the unrealistic goal of turning him into a perennial ace starter and more focused on getting the best possible pitching out of him, which they will now that he’s a reliever. In 2005, when he pitched out of the bullpen while injured (the team was chasing phantasmal hopes for the wild card), he was brilliant in 11 games, during which he ran up a 2.25 ERA and looked like the second coming of Goose Gossage. Wood’s arm woes through the years haven’t deprived him of any of his stuff, they’ve just affected his ability to throw more than 40 or so pitches at a time. If he’s managed well — and Baker, fixated on turning Wood into Nolan Ryan, wasn’t going to do it — he can be the best closer in the league, and a star to add to the team’s already impressive core.

The Cubs are not a true 96-loss team. They played last year with possibly the worst manager in the game making horrific personnel decisions, with a bad closer, and without Lee for most of the year. Marginal competence from the bench and health from their key players should return them to .500; another couple of uncharacteristically good decisions could put them right on top of a division that may have produced the World Series winner this year, but didn’t produce an 85-win team. Or not. They are, after all, the Cubs.

tmarchman@nysun.com