As Gordon Wittenmyer of the Sun Times reported, the Cubs baseball brass does not like this role.
“We don’t like having days
like [Tuesday], where there are big trades and free-agent signings and
we’re sitting it out,” team president Theo Epstein said. “You think we
want to be there sitting it out? No. But there will be a day real soon
when we’re right in the middle of that because we have more financial
flexibility, because we have lots of talented young players — assets
that everyone wants around the game — and we’re going to be the ones
dictating all those big moves.”
Wittenmyer realizes that “real soon” is a
relative term,. It will not be happening this off season, even with tens of millions
in increased revenues per team coming into the game from national revenue sources.
“You hope to at least have
things teed up,” general manager Jed Hoyer said. “With the way things
are moving quicker, we’ll try hard to get stuff done, and I hope that’s
the way it works out.”
“Our business plan and our
baseball plans are actually pretty synced up in terms of the timing,”
Epstein repeated from last week's comments, “and so I hope that both
sides of the organization continue with
their plan and execute at a high level so there’s more resources and
there’s more flexibility and we have more mature, talented players in
the organization.”
The actual timing when the Cubs will be in position to make bold moves like the Yankees, Dodgers or Mariners? “All those things are coming
up,” he said. “We can’t speed it up. We can’t make time go faster, but I
really feel like we’re going in the right direction.”
The continued vagueness in answering the question of WHEN the Cubs will be in position to make big moves can only mean two things: a) Epstein does not know; or b) he does know but does not want to tell the public for fear of a backlash.
But it does not take a lot of research to determine that the baseball clubs that can make a big impact in the off season are those clubs that have new billion dollar local broadcast deals. The Cubs will not be in a position to make any sort of splash with a Cubs Channel until 2019. If management would tell the fan base that The Wait is going to be at least five more years, a large percentage of season ticket holders would drop out because they would not want to spend tens of thousands of dollars for five more years for a AAA product on the field.
The Cubs baseball people also bristle at the reports that the Cubs do not have the financial strength to compete with international free agent players like Japan's Tanaka, if he gets posted by his team. However, there are signs that the Cubs are in real need of a revenue boost. That's all that Ricketts talks about: adding new revenue streams. The Cubs have also cut back on their major league payroll for the last four years. The Cubs have a huge debt service as a result of the Ricketts purchase of the team. Epstein admitted last week that the Cubs were heavily reliant on ticket sales. Attendance has been falling for the past three seasons. The Ricketts have a grand real estate development project which will cost millions to borrow and build. Based on all these factors, money is tight with the Cubs. The team asked for season ticket deposits early, and started new ticket package sales in December. This is all to increase off season cash flow. And most interestingly, the Cubs will not start any approved construction projects until the rooftop owners agree not to sue. Construction costs are bound to rise over time, so why put off non-controversial rehabilitation of Wrigley Field? One answer would be to conserve cash and improve the balance sheet.
You have a big market team acting like a small market club during its rebuilding process. It is frustrating to the baseball executives to sit on the sidelines. It is also frustrating for the fan base to wait for solid answers and improvement of their team.
