2020 Team

[rok]

I was going to post the same thing. And you know what? It's probably for the best, because my guess is that the FO would likely fuck up any trade for KB anyway now that the offseason is almost over. Can still move him at the deadline if the team is out of contention, and assuming he is likely to walk at the end of the season.

[Butcher]

The Cubs did what every other organization does -- it was entirely expected. Maybe this will prompt them to change the rule (it's a stupid rule and absolutely should be changed), but I'll be really surprised if he wins it.

[funkster]

I would too.  I don't think the time it's taking has any bearing on what the outcome will be.

[1060Ivy]

Agreed that timing shouldn’t affect outcome of decision but it has affected Cub options for offseason if you maintain that Cubs must get below luxury tax limit/can’t add 2020 salaries

[rok]

Who?



https://twitter.com/mbain_38/status/1217895531873210368





https://uspbl.com/max-bain-signs-with-chicago-cubs/

[Kid]

Ricketts sat down with Mooney for The Athletic:

 

At least the Cubs haven’t been dragged into a sign-stealing scandal like the Astros and the Red Sox.
 

That’s the bright side to what looks like a second-straight frozen winter for the Cubs, a team that keeps harping on the need for change but still has largely the same roster that underperformed the last two Septembers.

 

Cubs Convention — the team’s annual festival designed to hype the upcoming season — opens Friday at the Sheraton Grand Chicago. The overwhelming mood won’t be of gratitude for that 2016 World Series title, which now feels like a very long time ago.

It wasn’t just the delirious fans or the giddy media types who stoked those great expectations. Team executives and players wanted a dynasty, talking up the idea of a “Cubs Way” that’s getting harder to define.

 

Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer haven’t signed a free agent to a fully guaranteed major-league contract this offseason, making a series of minor-league deals with players most fans couldn’t pick out of a lineup. Kris Bryant’s name is frequently floated in trade rumors, instead of extension ones. Anthony Rizzo is wondering about his next contract. New manager David Ross was answering questions about Bryant’s future at a Cubs charity event Thursday.

 

Up on the sixth floor of the Wrigley Field office building, Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts generally tries to avoid what’s trending on Twitter or talk radio. The ownership impulses that usually drive free-agent megadeals don’t really exist here, and the Cubs no longer have 1908 hanging over their heads.

 

“The way that the baseball model is set up, it lends itself to those boom-and-bust kind of cycles,” Ricketts said to The Athletic on Thursday during a rare media interview in his office. “Teams have a couple great years, then they have a couple terrible years, then they have a couple great years. We’d like to get out of that model. We’d like to crawl out of that lobster pot. We want to be consistent. It’s going to take making good long-term decisions every year to do that.”

 

Ricketts spearheaded his family’s $845 million purchase of the team, Wrigley Field and what was then called Comcast SportsNet Chicago. That 2009 deal with Tribune Co. has proven to be a spectacular investment and is now estimated to be worth more than $3 billion.

 

Around the time the Ricketts family took control of the Cubs, teams like the Phillies, Giants and Tigers were heavyweights. Each one has gone through its own kind of reckoning. The Cubs aren’t conceding the 2020 season, but this is clearly a team with little margin for error and an organization focused on fine points like the competitive balance tax.

 

At this point, RosterResource.com estimates the Cubs are already beyond the first luxury tax threshold — $208 million — with a projected 2020 payroll of around $214 million. Even while discussing lower-tier free agents, the Cubs have signaled that they would first have to move salary before fitting another major-league contract into the budget for baseball operations.

 

“We want to be one of the teams that are expected to make the playoffs,” Ricketts said. “You saw what happened last year — (a) wild-card team won the World Series. We’ve been preaching that. We’ve been telling that story every year. The idea is to be consistent and put a quality team on the field. That’s always the No. 1 goal.

 

“First of all, payroll doesn’t solve all your problems. The top payrolls last year didn’t even make the playoffs, and we were one of them. Our baseball spend will be at the top — or among the top teams — every year going forward. We’ve developed the resources here to be consistent on that.

 

“The real question is: Can you put the resources in the right place to win the division or to make the wild card? That’s where Theo and Jed are working very hard to make sure that we have the right team on the field for next year. CBT is a real factor. It’s not the defining factor of this offseason. What we’re going to do with CBT is not something we discuss publicly.

 

“But fans should know there is a cost if you keep your payroll high enough long enough. You’re paying money into the league, which ultimately goes to other teams, and you can lose draft position. It’s a factor. It’s not the defining factor of the offseason.”

 

Ricketts isn’t a backseat GM, allowing employees to do their jobs instead of meddling in personnel decisions. He has shown a genuine interest in player development, investing in a bigger front office, pushing for better major- and minor-league facilities and helping create what is viewed as a first-class experience for Cubs players.

 

As the Cubs began their title defense in 2017, baseball analyst Joe Sheehan wrote in The Washington Post that the 2016 team had the youngest group of position players of any World Series winner since the 1969 Mets. Talented, charismatic players like Bryant, Rizzo, Javier Báez and Willson Contreras were supposed to be part of baseball’s next dynasty. But remember, the Mets didn’t win it again until 1986.

 

The Cubs understood that elite young talents become exponentially more expensive through the arbitration system, and prepared to pay for pitching through trades and free agency. But through eight draft classes, the Epstein regime still has not produced an impact homegrown pitcher for the big-league club, a frustrating search that triggered widespread changes in the scouting and player development departments.

 

After a series of win-now trades diluted the overall talent level, the farm system is making gradual improvements with top-100-caliber prospects like Brennen Davis, Brailyn Marquez and Miguel Amaya, as well as Nico Hoerner — the first player from the 2018 draft class to make his big-league debut last year.

 

“We have some good guys coming,” Ricketts said. “Maybe it would have been nice to have a couple more coming a little quicker. But, look, I think we do the right things. We’re investing a lot of money into player development. As everyone who’s followed the game knows, the trend now is not just to accept how the player is, but try to make them better.

 

“We’re cutting-edge in terms of dollars that are spent, and strategies — once we get a player in the system — to maximize their potential. So we’re investing in our future (to) get players to their potential. In terms of what we’ve drafted over the last few years, it’s always nice to have more players than less. But I think we’re heading in the right direction.”

 

A lot of the same people — and some of the same processes — that led the Cubs to have Baseball America’s No. 1 farm system and end the 108-year championship “curse” are still in place. As the lead architect of three World Series winners in Boston and Chicago, Epstein should get the benefit of the doubt, even if he has made miscalculations in the free-agent market. Being able to take chances and cover up mistakes — while competing against franchises in St. Louis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh — is supposed to be a big-market advantage for the Cubs.

 

It would be understandable if Cubs officials decided that they probably wouldn’t beat the Yankees in a bidding war for Gerrit Cole and questioned the wisdom of guaranteeing a pitcher $324 million through almost all of his 30s.

 

For Cubs fans, it is far more difficult to accept the hard line drawn by ownership when the team has star players in their primes and obvious areas of need. We are talking about an established reliever here, a complementary outfielder there, not Bryce Harper’s 13-year, $330 million deal with the Phillies.

 

“I’m not going to go into that,” Ricketts said. “That’s really the Theo department. But we still have a long time before baseball starts, too.”

 

The Cubs paid the luxury tax after the 2016 championship season, and went over the threshold again last year when they finished in third place and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2014. Combined, those two bills amounted to roughly $11 million, according to the Associated Press, though the collective bargaining agreement does contain escalating penalties.

 

Paying the luxury tax again could be rationalized as the cost of doing business or an investment in the team’s soon-to-launch TV network or an opportunity to go for it again before the Cubs lose this unique generation of players and their future Hall of Fame executive.

 

As long as Bryant and Contreras remain Cubs employees, Epstein still has the potential to shock the baseball world this winter and dramatically reimagine the team. But the Cubs are running out of contingency plans in the middle of January.

 

Part of the logic behind trading Contreras would be believing in Victor Caratini’s development as a switch-hitter and Yu Darvish’s personal catcher. The Cubs could then sign a veteran catcher to pair with Caratini. But on its free-agent tracker, MLB Trade

Rumors lists 22 catchers who have already signed major- or minor-league deals.

 

The long wait for a resolution to Bryant’s service-time grievance — as well as the faster pace of the free-agent market this offseason — has also worked against the Cubs.

 

“The timing of it probably is a little bit of a factor,” Ricketts said. “But hopefully it will all be resolved soon and we’ll see where it goes.”

 

The baseball industry has already spent more than $2 billion on free agents this offseason, severely limiting Epstein’s options to reinvest in the 2020 team if the Cubs shed Bryant’s $18.6 million salary in a trade (after an arbitrator determines whether he will become a free agent after the 2021 season).

 

Scott Boras has negotiated more than $1 billion in contracts this offseason — even with Nicholas Castellanos still unsigned — but the primary business the Cubs have done with Boras Corp. include Bryant’s grievance, declining to offer Addison Russell a contract and retaining Albert Almora Jr. as an extra outfielder.

 

“We’ve gotten away from talking in terms of windows,” Ricketts said. “We’d like to be consistent. We want to have a team that can win the division every year. We put a lot of resources to work. I think we have a great team now, and who knows what happens between now and the opening day of spring training.”

 

At a Sports Business Journal conference last month, Ricketts delivered this money quote about the Wrigley Field renovations: “We probably missed our budget by around 100 percent.”

 

Ricketts clarified that comment, saying it was “kind of in jest” and unrelated to the team’s quiet offseason.

 

Including all the surrounding development in Wrigleyville, those costs reached around $1 billion for an extremely complicated undertaking, working on condensed construction schedules in the middle of Chicago winters. Those expenses were also distributed as a long-term project financed, in part, by the minority ownership shares the Ricketts family sold to a select group of investors years ago. Think of it as your mortgage on a far bigger scale: You don’t put down all the money at once.

 

Ricketts said: “The fact is that our preliminary assessments — before we had a pretty good look at what the situation really was at Wrigley — (showed) it was going to be $300 million or something in that range. It turned out to be $740 million in the end. But no one could have known in advance the level of the issues we were going to find.

 

“We were also very much in the mindset of: ‘Let’s measure twice, cut once. Let’s do it right.’ We intend to own the team for the next generation or two. We want to make sure that the person that follows me in this chair doesn’t have to worry about the same problems that we had to deal with. So we spent all the money to make sure Wrigley Field was not only an improvement for the fans but something that’s structurally viable for the next hundred years.

 

“It did not affect the baseball budget. We financed it. One of the things we did was we sold pieces of the team. We paid for it by selling off assets, selling off equity in the team. That effectively covered the expenses that we didn’t anticipate — that we could not have anticipated — early on.”

 

The Cubs are an easy target with all their new private clubs, but the video boards, player amenities and open space at Gallagher Way have all received positive reviews. The Cubs passed the 3-million mark in attendance in each of the last four seasons and finished as the game’s biggest road attraction last year.

 

“Going back to 2009, 2010, no one had done any substantial renovations of the ballpark since the ’40s,” Ricketts said. “The Tribune had done a few things that generated revenue. But you remember how it was. Like some concrete fell off the upper deck, and instead of fixing it, they just put up nets. That was the mindset of previous ownership.

 

“We made a commitment on Day 1 when we bought the team to preserve and improve Wrigley Field. As it turns out, it was more expensive than we would have known back then. But it was more expensive than anyone could have guessed because no one knew. No one had taken out the walls at Wrigley and really looked inside. It’s an old stadium. It needed to be helped.”

 

Any examination of the Cubs has to take into account the team’s self-image. This is the same organization that cooperated with Bloomberg Businessweek for an April 2015 cover story that trumpeted a “sports empire is in bloom” after “a century of epic mismanagement.” The magazine got the memorable quote from president of business operations Crane Kenney about how his job is to “fill a wheelbarrow with money, take it to Theo’s office and dump it.”

 

Epstein’s baseball operations department is still waiting for that huge bump in new TV money. While some TV industry officials have credited Ricketts and Kenney for thinking big and taking a risk when the easier play would have been taking the money from NBC/Comcast, the Cubs won’t realize the full economic impact until their network is fully distributed on the region’s cable systems.  The Marquee Sports Network, a joint venture between the Cubs and Sinclair Broadcast Group, will debut next month with the team’s first spring training game in Arizona.

 

“We’ve got a lot of good momentum,” Ricketts said. “We’ve got good carriage so far. It’s not 100 percent done, but we’re going to keep pushing forward. It really hasn’t had any impact on baseball spending. We just know that we still got some work to do there, but it’s going to be a great thing for the fans. And it’s the right long-term answer.”

 

While Marquee announced a carriage agreement for all AT&T platforms, including DirecTV, in October, Cubs fans are still wondering about a deal with Comcast, which remains a dominant cable provider in Chicago and a direct competitor in the form of NBC Sports Chicago.

 

“We’ve got a couple of very good carriage deals set up,” Ricketts said. “We’ve got more that we’re going to announce over the next few days. With regards to Comcast, we’ll see how it plays out. I think everybody wants to do the right thing for their customers. And I think that’s going to be the driving force.”

 

If the unknowns about Marquee and the cost of the Wrigley Field renovations haven’t been a huge hindrance to this offseason, then why haven’t the Cubs signed a major-league free agent yet?

 

“That’s a question for Theo, in many respects,” Ricketts said. “Once again, (it’s) going back to the fact that just spending money doesn’t guarantee you wins. We also understand (that) as we’ve had this core of talent, every year they have built-in raises through the arbitration model, so a lot of the financial resources are going to the players that we already have, which is great. That’s the way it works.

 

“There’s no magic free agent out there, anyway. You look at what happened last year with the Padres or the Phillies and it doesn’t always solve your problems.”

 

At this time last year, it also felt like the Cubs wasted an offseason. But once Ben Zobrist took an unpaid personal leave of absence in May, Epstein used that newfound financial flexibility to sign All-Star closer Craig Kimbrel to a three-year, $43 million contract after the June draft.

 

While Kimbrel struggled to stay healthy and effective after his long holdout, Castellanos excelled after getting traded from the Tigers at the July 31 deadline. Ricketts authorized the Castellanos deal, expanding the budget for baseball operations by almost $3 million because he understood the team needed a spark.

 

“When Theo comes to suggest something like that, I generally approve it,” Ricketts said. “Kimbrel was a little more complicated than that earlier in the year. Certainly, a lot more money and a long-term commitment. It will be important for us to give him all the resources he needs to get ready for the season, so we can have a full season of the real Craig Kimbrel.”

 

Epstein’s front office should be prepared for either outcome at the July 31 trade deadline this year. Maybe the Cubs continue to regress and use that as an opportunity to restock the farm system. Or perhaps Ross’ leadership is exactly what this team needs, Kimbrel comes back strong and Darvish pitches like a Cy Young Award winner for an entire season.

 

“You look at the history of what we’ve done over the last several years, we always are looking for a midseason piece that can help the club,” Ricketts said. “One of the things you have to give a lot of credit to Jed and Theo (is) they’ve been pretty good at that, whether it was Castellanos or (Daniel) Murphy or if you go back further to (Aroldis) Chapman, bringing in a supplemental piece at the end of July. Obviously, if the situation warrants that this year, we’ll go there, too.”

 

As for what that baseball operations department might look like after the 2021 season, or if Hoyer will be elevated from GM to president to replace Epstein, Ricketts doesn’t want to go there now.

 

“I haven’t really thought about a succession plan,” Ricketts said. “We got a couple more years of Theo under contract. He may want to stay at the end of that. He may not. I don’t know. We haven’t really crossed that bridge.”

 

There is a perception that Ricketts had been ducking the media after the Cubs last year canceled what had been a traditional Q&A with fans on the Saturday morning of Cubs Convention.

 

It is also fair to point out that while Ricketts certainly enjoyed the World Series victory lap, he has also never been the kind of egomaniac owner who demands to be the face and voice of the team.

 

“In terms of a lot of the other noise or negative press,” Ricketts said, “I don’t worry about it much.”

 

The optics were bad, given the potential lines of questioning last winter. With Harper and Manny Machado still out there, the Cubs’ biggest free-agent deal that offseason had been Daniel Descalso’s two-year, $5 million contract. The Cubs had decided to give Russell a conditional second chance while he served a domestic violence suspension. Board member Todd Ricketts continued to gain influence as a political operator and is now the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee and Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign.

 

Still, it wouldn’t have been that difficult for Ricketts and his sister, board member Laura Ricketts, to get through that hour inside the hotel ballroom. They are both skilled at defusing those tense, awkward moments and speaking directly to fans. (Board member Pete Ricketts receded from those sessions as he rose to become the governor of Nebraska.) There is usually a team-friendly moderator or two on stage to help guide the conversation, which can present ownership’s point of view in a unique, mostly unscripted setting.

 

“We used to do like a family panel, but toward the end it really wasn’t all that valuable or interesting,” Ricketts said. “We did get low ratings. I’ll be around all convention. I walk around. I talk to people every day. We’ll have a lot of accessibility for the fans. But, frankly, we just think the panel time could be better used to talk about baseball.”

 

Ricketts will participate in Ryan Dempster’s talk show on Friday night and said the Cubs could reconsider another ownership panel in the future if there is enough interest.

 

Ricketts typically limits his public comments to one press conference at the beginning of spring training and an occasional radio interview, though he considers himself to be an exceptionally accessible owner because of his high visibility at Wrigley Field. Usually dressed in khakis and a blue or white dress shirt, it is easy to spot Ricketts in his first-row seat near the Cubs’ on-deck circle.

 

“Look, I don’t know how other guys do it,” Ricketts said with a laugh. “But I guarantee that there are more selfies of me than any other owner in sports.”

 

Yet on and off the field, the Cubs have used up some of the goodwill generated during that unforgettable World Series run in 2016. Joe Ricketts — the TD Ameritrade founder whose fortune allowed his children to buy the Cubs — had to apologize last year after Splinter News exposed emails in his account that expressed racist and Islamophobic views.

 

The team faded in 2018 — losing Game 163 and the wild-card game at Wrigley Field — before collapsing last September. Epstein dismissed Joe Maddon, a future Hall of Fame manager, and hired Ross, a popular ex-player/famous broadcaster who doesn’t have any formal experience in coaching or management. Cubs fans are no longer satisfied with the idea of “Just one before I die.”

 

“I think people appreciate everything that’s happened,” Ricketts said. “Everybody would like to win the World Series every year, but that’s just not going to happen. It’s just not possible. We just have to put a great team on the field every year and hope that we stay healthy and hope that we finish strong — two things we didn’t do last year. I think people really appreciate where the team’s at. But we’re always trying to get better and always trying to get back to that World Series.”

[funkster]

https://twitter.com/feinsand/status/1218...32320?s=21

[rok]

Sign all the unknown, below $1 million pitchers, I guess.

[rok]

https://twitter.com/cubs/status/1218269767099932673

[funkster]

Going to be an interesting season.

[rok]

Watching the Cubs Con opening ceremonies on YouTube, and Tom Ricketts was showered with boos when he started talking about Marquee. Very awkward.

[rok]

I can't keep up with this flurry of recent activity.



https://twitter.com/MDGonzales/status/12...5302419456

[jstraw]

Watching the Cubs Con opening ceremonies on YouTube, and Tom Ricketts was showered with boos when he started talking about Marquee. Very awkward.

 

Sinclair-related? Or more to do with all the potential new revenue not going toward improving the roster?

[Kid]

https://twitter.com/TonyAndracki23/statu...0778527745

[rok]

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="rok" data-cid="352490" data-time="1579311265">
Watching the Cubs Con opening ceremonies on YouTube, and Tom Ricketts was showered with boos when he started talking about Marquee. Very awkward.

 

Sinclair-related? Or more to do with all the potential new revenue not going toward improving the roster?</blockquote>
No idea, but probably some combo of both, plus the fact that many local fans will be in the dark until Comcast picks up the channel. Ricketts actually tried to chirp back after a brief silence, repeating the line "you won't be booing once we launch" or something to effect.