Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts called the perception that the Cubs aren’t willing to spend enough to go after the likes of Bryce Harper “misguided.”
Talking Thursday morning on WSCR-670, Ricketts defended budget restrictions by pointing out an already high payroll and citing burdens such as revenue sharing and costs associated with a team-owned stadium.
“We like our club. And we’re among the very top spenders. I think that stuff is just kind of misguided,” Ricketts said on the Mully & Haugh show.
For the first time since the Ricketts family bought the team before the 2010 season, fans won’t have a chance to ask the owners these questions themselves because their annual Saturday ownership panel has been scratched from this year’s Cubs Convention schedule – over “low ratings,” Ricketts said. “People would rather watch the mascot play bingo than listen to the owners speak,” he joked.
As for why one of the game’s top-three revenue producing teams isn’t more aggressive in one of the most dynamic free agent markets in years – in the middle of a fragile window of championship potential, at a time TV revenue increases are supposedly on the near horizon, Ricketts said:
“First of all, we have spent money this offseason. Obviously, we re-signed Cole Hamels, and we picked up Descalso,” he said, referring to low-cost free agent Daniel Descalso. “And I’m sure [team president] Theo [Epstein] has a few more moves left in him.
“Finally, we have one of the largest budgets in all of baseball. We’ve put that to work. We definitely signed a lot of players over the years, and we have a team that we like,” he added. “We have a team that we think is going to go a long way. We have a team that won 95 games without a lot of help from some of the guys we picked up last offseason, and with all the things we fought through last year with the injuries and everyone kind of having a down year and the off-field distractions.
“We had a great team last year. We got pretty far. No one liked how it ended. But We like what we have, and we think these guys are going to come back and the way it ended is going to bring our guys back even more motivated than ever.”
The Cubs committed a combined nine years and $164 million last year to pitchers Yu Darvish and Tyler Chatwood and got no return in the first years of those deals.
And they’ll go into this year with the first payroll over $200 million in franchise history even if they add nothing else before spring training.
Ricketts acknowledged last year’s spending and the anticipated spending on commitments down the road, including big arbitration raises for core players, are budget factors now.
“Both of those things,” he said. “When you make any free agent signing – not to pick on Darvish – you know you can’t spend that dollar twice, and you have to budget that into the future. So that’s going to limit what you can do the following year.
“One of the things we knew coming into this offseason was that we weren’t going to have as much flexibility as years past. We didn’t have big contracts coming off. We didn’t have a lot more cash coming in.”
All teams got one-time payments of $50 million last year through the majority-stake sale to ESPN of BAMTech, the league’s digital media arm. The Cubs’ one-game exit from the playoffs also meant almost no revenue from the postseason.
But the Cubs’ revenues – and ticket/merchandise/concession prices – have risen dramatically during the Ricketts’ ownership. And that might be their greatest market advantage in fielding a competitive team relative to most of the 29 other teams.
And this: They’re in a window to win big now. They’re in a division with no tankers for the first time in recent history. The top division opponents have added significant quality players this winter. Epstein called the offense “broke” when the season ended.
And this free agent class is especially equipped to fix what’s “broke,” between the likes of youthful superstars Manny Machado and Harper.
Ricketts talked about long-term “sustainability.” And he said he anticipates that with a healthy Darvish and all the communication this winter between lame-duck manager Joe Maddon, the front office and the players – “more so than past years” – the club has built-in fixes coming.
“The fact is we look at our lineup, and you look around the horn and who would you switch out?” Ricketts said. “We’ve got a pretty good team. I think we won 97 games on average the last four years. We’re still that team.”
