08-01-2021, 12:45 PM
The narrative will continue to change post-mortem, but I don't place blame for the failures of this era of Cubs baseball to sustain its success at all on the core. The FO never found the right mix of complementary players from which to build around the core. Whether it was a systemic scouting, drafting and development issue is not really up for debate, and if you keep making mistakes there and not adding young controllable talent on a consistent basis, and rely too heavily on the free agent market to plug holes with short-term deals, eventually ownership will justifiably cut off or limit the financial resources. Even the Dodgers and Yankees have danced around the CBT payroll threshold to avoid paying penalties, so this isn't unique to the Ricketts family. They suck, but for many different reasons than just suddenly pretending to be poor.