February 19, 2019

A STUMBLING START

To be objective, the Cubs stumbled into spring training.  The off-season story lines were less baseball and more "sand in the ice cream" moments for fans.

After months of educated speculation, Tom Ricketts finally admitted that the Cubs had no money to spend this off-season. As some critics retorted, he really meant to say he had the money but would not spend it. His answer lacked credibility. Ownership set a hard line payroll and operations budget. Theo Epstein could not knock down that wall. From one calculation, Epstein has booked $376 million in unproductive contracts. That was the knock that got him booted in Boston, bad dead money deals (Crawford, Gonzalez, etc.) The one thing die hard fans, who know the championship window is short, is that your team cannot spend any money to fix last season's problems.

Another family stumble and subsequent bumble was Daddy Ricketts racist emails. A baseball business that prides itself on being inclusive (because everybody's money is green) was extremely slow to address the Joe Ricketts story. And when Tom Ricketts addressed the media, he came off defending his father's tactless posts than appeasing the public's negative reaction to the story.

Piling on to the narrative was the fact that the Cubs have partnered with the most right wing extremist media company, Sinclair, to launch the new Cubs network. There is a partial "guilt by association" splatter when the new cable channel was announced by the business operations folks like Crane Kenney. But Kenney came off clueless with the changing dynamics of cable and entertainment distribution. He is still following the failed Dodger model. Yes, the team got its money but the cable partner got burned at the stake. Other cable operators in LA refused to pay the carriage fees for a Dodgers only channel. So, less than half of the coverage area can see Dodger games. And that number is shrinking because people are revolting from high cable bills (mostly unwanted sports add-ons) by cord cutting.

Besides the political incorrectness with Sinclair, the "sales pitch" of the new regional sports channel was a thud. An introductory rate of "only" $6 per month per subscriber was received as a greedy slap in the face. Lost on the Cubs is that their former home, Comcast, is the largest cable provider in the metro area. Comcast could probably say it will not carry the new Cubs network because it has its own sports channel (featuring White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks). Comcast is not going to push away its current subscribers to a $100/month cable bill just for the Cubs sake.

It is possible that the revenue projections and "investment" outside the baseball team have come to haunt the Ricketts. They bought the team with the largest debt in baseball history. That has to be coming due. They over built around Wrigley Field. They are pushing premium prices for everything around and inside the ball park. It is pushing our the casual fan and families. If the new network was going to be the revenue savior, that will not be the case. The Cubs will have build their own broadcast studios, invest in new programs to cover the 24 hours of time to fill, and to find advertisers who have bolted from TV and cable for internet platforms (Google and Facebook).

Then finally, the Addison Russell long over due press conference came off as an over-coached, lawyered-up, one memorized answer fail. Veteran beat reporters came away scratching their heads. Russell did not appear contrite. He did not sound sincere. His delivery was robotic and terrible. And he refused to admit even the basic allegations. Those who were critical of his behavior believed they had confirmed the worst. Many blame the Cubs for giving Russell a second chance when you are selling the Cubs as "family friendly" entertainment. But Russell is one of "Theo's guys," so management is going out of its way to protect their player, even though Russell has been trending down in production the past two years.

As spring training opened, there was little baseball buzz in Cubs camp as the non-baseball issues dominate the media and sports radio. And the Cubs PR machine broke down and did not handle any of them well.