2020 Chicago Cubs Offseason Thread

[Seyton]

Why would we expect it? If Tom Ricketts has made significantly more over the decade than he's lost (I think it's safe to assume that), than yeah, he shouldn't be lowering payroll because of one bad year. He won't open the books. I have no idea how much he's made. I have an expectation that the Cubs spend money like top MLB market team should. They have $140m current payroll for the 40 man in guaranteed money. That's pathetic for a team not relying on pre-arb contracts who just won the division. It's the first bad year of, well, almost any owner's time owning a team. The pandemic is an excuse, not an actual reason to not spend. Don't buy into it, dont give the excuse any power. It's ********.

Secondly, yes, he is cheap. We were told that they cut spending originally to redo the organization, then we'd consistently spend when we were winning. They didn't spend in 2019. They didn't spend in 2020. They haven't spent before 2021. They have had winning years all of those seasons and made the playoffs in 2018 and 2020. Both following offseasons the team went "whoopsies, no more monies for you!". That's ****ing cheap. The Dodgers win the damn WS and go add the best SP on the market during a pandemic. The Cubs can't spend money on an actual bench the year after they tie for the division. I will hold them to the standard of being the best. I'm not lowering my expectations just because other teams act this way. Just because other owners are cheap and won't go over the luxury tax is not an excuse for the Cubs to. It's like telling the officer you were speeding because the car in front of you, was also speeding. It doesn't matter, the speed limit is the speed limit. The same goes for my expectations for the Cubs. I don't care what others do or don't.

Simply put, being "better than the Tribune" which so many want to point to is not a barometer. They should easily be putting up the 3rd highest payroll almost every single season.

I will 100% demonize the man. He's a cheap ****. Being better than the "worst" is not a barometer I'm accepting of. Is he any worse than almost any ownership group in the MLB? Maybe not. But he's also no better. They're all cheap ****s.

Theo did not spend the money wisely. At some point the onus was on Theo to give out better contracts to better players. Ricketts isn't going to continue to throw good money after bad. I've always thought Ricketts' stance the past couple of years has been, "You got yourself into this mess."

I don't understand how Theo continues to avoid blame. It's a combination of things. Was it you who linked the Fan Graphs article about baseball being only one part of the overall equation? I don't remember but I'm sure you read it. Construction, hotels, Wrigleyville, Marquee, etc. all either lost money in conjunction with the actual baseball team. They don't separate the entities. If the bottom line is down or not where it's supposed to be all the entities are getting cut.

I don't like that but I get it. It seems everything has been delayed by last season and expectations for this coming season. I especially don't like that the Cubs are just one of entities that constitute an overall bottom line. But no one in their right mind chooses to lose money (if they are/did). They're only going to go over the cap if they have the revenues to cover it.

[1908_Cubs]

Theo did not spend the money wisely. At some point the onus was on Theo to give out better contracts to better players. Ricketts isn't going to continue to throw good money after bad. I've always thought Ricketts' stance the past couple of years has been, "You got yourself into this mess."

I don't understand how Theo continues to avoid blame. It's a combination of things. Was it you who linked the Fan Graphs article about baseball being only one part of the overall equation? I don't remember but I'm sure you read it. Construction, hotels, Wrigleyville, Marquee, etc. all either lost money in conjunction with the actual baseball team. They don't separate the entities. If the bottom line is down or not where it's supposed to be all the entities are getting cut.

I don't like that but I get it. It seems everything has been delayed by last season and expectations for this coming season. I especially don't like that the Cubs are just one of entities that constitute an overall bottom line. But no one in their right mind chooses to lose money (if they are/did). They're only going to go over the cap if they have the revenues to cover it.

People love to say "Theo did not spend money wisely", but he did. What "bad" contract has he given out? Jason Heyward was bad. Past that...what...Tyler Chatwood? It was only 3 years and while $36m sounds like a lot, in baseball terms it isn't (and it was not nearly as bad as the other contract people wanted, which was Alex Cobb). Craig Kimbrel? Jury's out. He looked so much better last year after his 3rd appearance. He was dominant. Think there's a definite ray of hope there. Darvish was a home run. Lester was a home run. Zobrist a home run. How many "bad" contracts did he give out? Where did he spend money "so badly"?

This idea that Theo somehow ****ed up with multiple bad contracts, is pretty silly. The Cubs have little to no guaranteed money going forward. Yes, Heyward's still here, but hell, even he's looking up. While we can all agree it's been bad, it's not even that bad. He's been worth 8 fWAR so far. Last year ended short, and while I wont just extrapolate him out to 5.5+ fWAR (which he was on pace for), I'm going give him up to 3.5 fWAR. So 7.9+1.5 = 9.4 fWAR in 5 seasons. If we use the market, you pay about $8m per fWAR roughly. So, $75.2m of value has been returned on $99m invested. Yeah, it's not good, but it's not some monster anchor. Over 5 years, he's cost the Cubs under $5m in spending a year. So...a bench player a year. Again, not good, but people need to stop acting like this is like, entirely a sunk cost of horribad. He's been a pretty good platoon player, especially as of late. He's overpaid. It's bad. But not...not nearly as bad as some act.

I don't agree he's spent unwise. Some things turned out poorly. Sure. He's hampered us with almost zero long term bad contracts, outside of Heyward, and even then, the value isn't albratross level of bad. He's made some trades that mortgaged the future for the now (as teams are wont to due). I have some complaints; the Cubs were late on the pitch lab thing; their pitching infrastructure has been lagging behind (though, it was also Theo who brought in Breslow who's reoworked it all top to bottom and we're seeing payoffs now). I didn't like the Chatwood deal at the time, and even if it wasn't a horrible bad long term deal, he missed the market that year. He failed to address some things, relied to much on guys I thought shouldn't have been as heavily relied on, mainly the bench. But they had a great run between 2015-2020. It could have easily been "2021 and more" had Ricketts not cut spending so drastically this year. Rickett's hampered Theo way more than Theo hampered the Cubs winning.

Ricketts isn't "losing" money. His net worth went up according to Forbes. He's making money. His net worth is going up because the franchise is adding value as is his real estate portfolio. He's not nearly as poor a he wants you to believe. He might have lost ticket revenue last year, but how much ticket revenue has he made since he bought the team? Probably way more than we realize (they don't open the books for good reason). The man has not lost money. Hell, as I stated, his portfolio only went up last year. He's doing just fine. Don't let Moneybags trick you into believing his schtick. He knows what he's doing. Stop giving him a pass.

Not to mention, Ricketts says he separates them. He said it, again, when Wrigley Field got historical landmark status. He's getting $100+m in tax credits. He already informed everyone that money will not go back to the Cubs. So it shouldn't matter if Marquee took a hit. But clearly it does. He wants to invoke the "everything else" clause when it means he spends less, but not when it means profits.

I've got a lot of feelings on this right now. There's zero reason for the Cubs to be doing what they're doing. No excuse. There was no excuse to turn the spickett off the last few years. There's certainly none now. He's making fistfulls of dollars. He'll walk away with literal billions of profit from the sale of the Cubs in 5, 10, 20 years....fans shouldn't have to deal with some shitstack of an 80 win team in this dumpsterfire of a division. They have $40m under the tax line (which is ******** anyways). If you want to play the "I'm too poor to pay the tax" then they easily should be able to spend that money. Go buy wins. They didn't. They bought Arrieta and Pederson and shrugged their shoulders. That will never be acceptable to me as a fan.

[CP_414]

He'll walk away with literal billions of profit from the sale of the Cubs in 5, 10, 20 years....fans shouldn't have to deal with some shitstack of an 80 win team in this dumpsterfire of a division.

I love that shitstack is such a unique word that it isn’t caught by the swear filters in here.

[thawv]

I love that shitstack is such a unique word that it isn’t caught by the swear filters in here.

I love the word! So we have shitstack. And we have **** stack.

[JD94]

It baffles me how it can be explained so simply what the Ricketts are doing, but yet some people still just have their mind made up that everything is okay. How can anybody be okay with this? CP and 1908 have done a fantastic job explaining it. You want to use the pandemic as an excuse not to spend, well for one, it didn’t stop other owners from spending this offseason. And 2, it had no effect on why we didn’t spend in 2018 or 2019 either. It’s like Ricketts got their WS and got us Darvish and then said to hell with putting any more money into this team. It’s like he knew the majority of the fanbase were satisfied that we won, and he knew that he didn’t have to put any more money into this team to keep the fans happy and spending their money. He realized that he could keep the team together as it was, while still being a contender, while still having the fanbase fully support the Cubs, and Ricketts could just ignore the holes because it wouldn’t really effect his bottom line any. It put Theo in a terrible spot. He couldn’t make the team better in free agency. He obviously didn’t think trading guys like Bryant was a good idea. His hands were tied. It’s ********.

[CubsRule08]

Trading A Cy Young-Caliber Starting Pitcher https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/...ts-dickey.html

Interesting article from MLBTR regarding the Darvish trade

[huff]

Any guesses on the reliever we’ve signed that’s hush hush ? Do we all think Jeffress? I think it might be David Robertson due to the extensive physical. Any ideas?

[JHBulls]

I love that shitstack is such a unique word that it isn’t caught by the swear filters in here.

On a forum I post on C U Next Tuesday filters into campaigner. So if you are on this forum talking politics you can never be sure if someone has just called you the C word or if they have just said something like “campaign trail” lol.

[cuzi]

People love to say "Theo did not spend money wisely", but he did. What "bad" contract has he given out? Jason Heyward was bad. Past that...what...Tyler Chatwood? It was only 3 years and while $36m sounds like a lot, in baseball terms it isn't (and it was not nearly as bad as the other contract people wanted, which was Alex Cobb). Craig Kimbrel? Jury's out. He looked so much better last year after his 3rd appearance. He was dominant. Think there's a definite ray of hope there. Darvish was a home run. Lester was a home run. Zobrist a home run. How many "bad" contracts did he give out? Where did he spend money "so badly"?

How was Darvish a homerun? Sure he has been amazing the last 1.5 years but he was literally paid more than he was worth over his time on the Cubs. That's not a homerun. And because of the risks involved in him going forward his contract which would normally be looked at as a steal for someone pitching like he has been wasn't looked at that way and the Cubs got back a handful of 45 FV prospects years away from sniffing the majors and most havent even suited up professionally.

[CP_414]

How was Darvish a homerun? Sure he has been amazing the last 1.5 years but he was literally paid more than he was worth over his time on the Cubs. That's not a homerun. And because of the risks involved in him going forward his contract which would normally be looked at as a steal for someone pitching like he has been wasn't looked at that way and the Cubs got back a handful of 45 FV prospects years away from sniffing the majors and most havent even suited up professionally.

Darvish got hurt the 1st year. That’s unfortunate. He’s been a top 5 pitcher in mlb over the last 1.5+ years. Then he got traded with enough surplus value to bring back 4 interesting (but far away) prospects and an average-ish Mlb starter in an offseason where few top rated prospects were traded for anyone. That’s absolutely a home run. Anytime you get good production from a big FA signing and you can trade him for surplus value that’s by definition a very good contract. 3 years after signing, the league determined he’s worth more than he’s owed.

They aren’t getting surplus value on Heyward or Kimbrel. They couldn’t have gotten it on Chatwood. Those deals are net negatives. Darvish is an easy win.

[cuzi]

Darvish got hurt the 1st year. That’s unfortunate. He’s been a top 5 pitcher in mlb over the last 1.5+ years. Then he got traded with enough surplus value to bring back 4 interesting (but far away) prospects and an average-ish Mlb starter in an offseason where few top rated prospects were traded for anyone. That’s absolutely a home run. Anytime you get good production from a big FA signing and you can trade him for surplus value that’s by definition a very good contract. 3 years after signing, the league determined he’s worth more than he’s owed.

They aren’t getting surplus value on Heyward or Kimbrel. They couldn’t have gotten it on Chatwood. Those deals are net negatives. Darvish is an easy win.

By what measure did the Cubs get surplus value in return?

The surplus value on Darvish alone, not even including Caratini, is 16.8.

The surplus value on everything the Cubs got in return is 11.9. The value in players the Cubs got is less than the cash they got off the books.

What are we smoking tonight? I need some.

[Stratos]

They have $140m current payroll for the 40 man in guaranteed money. That's pathetic for a team not relying on pre-arb contracts who just won the division. It's the first bad year of, well, almost any owner's time owning a team.

I think the payroll now is lower than it should be, I agree with that. This offseason he's been legit cheap.

Before this offseason we've been a top 3 payroll team for the last few years. Not adding players last year doesn't mean we weren't adding payroll. We had a bunch of our best players getting raises in arb at the same time, plus we added Kimbrel in the middle of 2019. We were a top 3 payroll team in 2020. You could maybe make the argument we could have spent even more the last few years and go way over the tax, but I don't think payroll was our biggest problem.

The Dodgers win the damn WS and go add the best SP on the market during a pandemic.

The Dodgers are in a WS window and making a big push. Same with Padres and Blue Jays, I expect them to spend. I agree we've been cheap this offseason but i also don't expect us to be the Dodgers or the Jays this offseason. It would have been nice if we could have acted like the Dodgers a few years ago and spent more money to get a FA starter instead of trading good prospects for Quintana. The same even goes for the Chapman trade, why didn't we lock in a good closer before that offseason instead of needing to trade away Gleyber?

We're in a transition period right now, things are in flux, and the foundation of this team has been quicksand the last few years and underachieving. I'm not worried about the payroll too much, I'm sure he'll pour money back in when the fundamentals of our team look more promising.

[JD94]

I think the payroll now is lower than it should be, I agree with that. This offseason he's been legit cheap.

Before this offseason we've been a top 3 payroll team for the last few years. Not adding players last year doesn't mean we weren't adding payroll. We had a bunch of our best players getting raises in arb at the same time, plus we added Kimbrel in the middle of 2019. We were a top 3 payroll team in 2020. You could maybe make the argument we could have spent even more the last few years and go way over the tax, but I don't think payroll was our biggest problem.



The Dodgers are in a WS window and making a big push. Same with Padres and Blue Jays, I expect them to spend. I agree we've been cheap this offseason but i also don't expect us to be the Dodgers or the Jays this offseason. It would have been nice if we could have acted like the Dodgers a few years ago and spent more money to get a FA starter instead of trading good prospects for Quintana. The same even goes for the Chapman trade, why didn't we lock in a good closer before that offseason instead of needing to trade away Gleyber?

We're in a transition period right now, things are in flux, and the foundation of this team has been quicksand the last few years and underachieving. I'm not worried about the payroll too much, I'm sure he'll pour money back in when the fundamentals of our team look more promising.

But that’s the thing. Ricketts was fine with not doing anything even though we had holes. He knew the average fan would look at payroll and see we were near the top and he could always point to that. He knew the team was still going to contend for the division without him giving the “ok” to spend to fix holes needed to compete for a WS. He wins in all this. He didn’t have to spend any more money because the team was good (though not good enough). He makes more profit that way and the majority of the fans are fine with it because they don’t know any better. He isn’t broke. He could have continued writing checks, but he doesn’t give a **** about whether the team can actually win the WS or not. Especially not after we won.

And to the Chapman point, Rondon had been pretty lights out in ‘14 and ‘15 and I think we felt pretty comfortable with him being that guy going into ‘16. He took a step back and wasn’t as good. We didn’t even trust him in the playoffs. The Chapman deal had to be made or we don’t win a WS. Andrew Miller probably would have worked as well, but he would have been expensive like Chapman. I was and still am fine with that deal to get that WS that this fanbase deserved and needed. Going forward, considering we finally got that championship, I would rather see this team ran a little less aggressively - more on par with the Dodgers. Maybe hoard top prospects more, rather than going all out to win one year. Set it up for true sustained success.

[Stratos]

People love to say "Theo did not spend money wisely", but he did. What "bad" contract has he given out? Jason Heyward was bad. Past that...what...Tyler Chatwood? It was only 3 years and while $36m sounds like a lot, in baseball terms it isn't (and it was not nearly as bad as the other contract people wanted, which was Alex Cobb). Craig Kimbrel? Jury's out.

How many good multi-year FA signings has Theo made since 2016? They mostly look like crap to me. You could argue Darvish but he also under-performed most of his time as a Cub. Chatwood sucked, Morrow sucked, Descalso sucked, Kimbrel sucked. Some of that is bad luck, some of it isn't. Cishek was a good signing.

On top of that, almost all of the guys that went through our system have regressed. Bryant, Contreras, Baez, Russell, Almora, Carl Edwards, Schwarber. Happ too but at least he's found his way back. The Cubs have had the touch of death for a few years now. Almost everyone has nosedived. It's embarrassing. This team has been a joke since 2018. I'm very disappointed more of our core hasn't been moved this offseason because of how dysfunction we've been.

[1908_Cubs]

I think the payroll now is lower than it should be, I agree with that. This offseason he's been legit cheap.

Before this offseason we've been a top 3 payroll team for the last few years. Not adding players last year doesn't mean we weren't adding payroll. We had a bunch of our best players getting raises in arb at the same time, plus we added Kimbrel in the middle of 2019. We were a top 3 payroll team in 2020. You could maybe make the argument we could have spent even more the last few years and go way over the tax, but I don't think payroll was our biggest problem.



The Dodgers are in a WS window and making a big push. Same with Padres and Blue Jays, I expect them to spend. I agree we've been cheap this offseason but i also don't expect us to be the Dodgers or the Jays this offseason. It would have been nice if we could have acted like the Dodgers a few years ago and spent more money to get a FA starter instead of trading good prospects for Quintana. The same even goes for the Chapman trade, why didn't we lock in a good closer before that offseason instead of needing to trade away Gleyber?

We're in a transition period right now, things are in flux, and the foundation of this team has been quicksand the last few years and underachieving. I'm not worried about the payroll too much, I'm sure he'll pour money back in when the fundamentals of our team look more promising.

The Cubs won the NL Central last year and had significant money coming off the books. If they spent money this offseason they wouldn't be in a transition period. It didn't even need to be long term money. Most deals this offseason league wide have been signed and end in 2022.

When a team wins a division and has money come off the books, especially a team who is one of the 4 most profitable teams in one of the 4 biggest markets, you expect them to spend. We only didn't expect to spend because we have a cheap *** owner and we knew well before the season ended he wasn't going to. Thats why we didn't expect it. Not because the Cubs are the Tampa Bay Rays. We should expect the Cubs to spend every offseason they have a good enough foundation in place. Especially in an offseason of short term contracts. Our standards should be higher.

One person decided we would be in a transition period. One. The Cubs could have bought wins easily this offseason. They could have easily used the $50m they'd have had at the start of the offseason under the lux tax (or hell gone over that BS line) and waltzed into next year the easy NL Central favorites and positioned well. Would they be Dodgers good? No. But you don't have to be Dodgers good to win a WS. It was a self imposed transition. One that need not have transpired.

Instead we cried poor because of one bad year of profits and decided to transition. It was an excuse. Its one no one in their right mind should defend.

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