Anthony Rizzo was told by veteran teammates seven years ago this day would come — along with all the emotions — if he took the deal the Cubs dangled with talk of making the rookie a cornerstone for their championship promises.
Now the three-time All-Star openly wonders whether they even want him around much longer.
Rizzo, whose efforts to start talks on an extension this winter went nowhere with the payroll-conscious Cubs, will be 32 when the team exhausts the last club option on his contract and he plays his last season under club control in 2021.
Rizzo, whose seven-year, $41 million deal as a rookie turned into a steal for the club, said he’ll keep his reactions and emotions to the Cubs’ current stance on his status “in-house.”
What’s clear is that he’ll be just one more walking, talking exhibit underscoring the unpleasant theme of this year’s Cubs Convention: that the arctic chill of business has finally, fully overtaken the last comforts of warm and fuzzy baseball. Even when it comes to one of the richest franchises in baseball and its relationships with not only its best and most popular players but also with one of the most loyal fan bases in sports.
“I think I said it in August [too]: This is as cutthroat as ever now,” Rizzo said.
Long gone are the cheap seats. Next out the door the heroes of that magical, historic championship just 3½ years ago?
To be replaced by clubs and suites for the wealthy and the next wave of younger, cheaper players — whoever they might be?
Say it ain’t so, Joe Ricketts.
“It would be kind of irresponsible and naïve of us players to not know that they have a business to run,” Rizzo said. “And we’re a part of their business, and we’re a part of an entity. We’re players. We know this game really doesn’t know any names. You’re just another piece of the puzzle. And if I’m not playing first base someone else will be.”
For Rizzo, for now, that means waiting on whatever the next window for the Cubs starts to look like, wondering how he might fit that one and preparing for an uncertain back half of his career that may not include the only team he wants to play for.
“I’ve stated how much I love this place,” he said. “This is like home to me and my wife and my family. But this is a business.”
Get used to it. At least Rizzo, the first baseman who secured the final putout of the 2016 championship, seems to have a better chance of sticking around for the next two years than the third baseman who threw him the ball for that out, Kris Bryant.
Bryant, the National League MVP that year, is first up on the trade block among a number of core players who might yet be moved by the July 31 trade deadline — if not by Opening Day.
“I totally get his perspective,” general manager Jed Hoyer said of Rizzo’s comments during an interview on the Score Friday. “We offered all those guys extensions. We tried hard to really keep this group together as long as we can.”
But Hoyer, who acknowledged the Cubs’ offseason activity might only now be starting, said a new reality has set in regarding a talented young core that in most cases has just two years left of club control.
“I think we had a point in time where [extending all of the key core players] might have been possible,” he said, “but we passed that.”
So a $3.2 billion franchise with top-five — and growing — revenues in the game runs the numbers, runs from the luxury tax and runs out some talking points on “sustained success,” long-term vision and building “the next Cubs championship window.”
And then has to trade Bryant because he wouldn’t take the kind of team-friendly deal Rizzo did years ago. And turns then to former MVP runner-up Javy Baez with more optimistic expectations for below-market extension. And pleads higher priorities and payroll issues with cornerstone players who took less and want to stay.
Talk about billionaire-world problems.
“It’s just a whole different ballgame we’re working with now,” Rizzo said.
