The happy family facade at Clark and Addison is beginning to crack.
The national media is confused by how the Cubs front office is acting this off-season. Even local writers have woken up to the prospect that the Cubs may not be the Midwest, free spending, big market Yankees.
It began when Theo Epstein post season autopsy, er, press conference left a lasting impression that Theo was not happy. He stressed the fact that the team has to focus in on performance and not talent. It means highly prized prospects have to perform better in order to keep their spot. But on the flip side, the Cubs brass have always been enamored with "their guys." They will keep their guys well past their trade value. And now, Epstein admits, that the 2019 roster improvement will have to come via trades.
It is stunning reversal for the genius baseball gods. The plan was to draft the best bats available and solve pitching via free agency. Young position players are cheap and controllable up to six years. Veteran reliable pitching, though expensive, is less likely to be busts. Well, until this year.
The Cubs spent more than $185 million on Yu Darvish, Tyler Chatwood and Brandon Morrow. The next consensus is that the three star pitchers flamed out badly. Darvish had injury problems from the start. Morrow had a long injury history. And Chatwood was plain bad.
The Cubs have drafted 147 pitchers in the past seven years and they have not developed one quality starting pitcher. Last season, Theo-Jed's farm system produced less than 20 innings of home grown pitching talent. It is a disaster. It has crippled the organization.
The quick promotions of Bryant, Schwarber and Happ have created a prospect vacuum in the minors. The best prospects are now at low A, four or five years away from the majors. Triple A is filled with AAA players with little chance to catch on even in a bench role. The minor league system has little trading chips. And the major league roster has very few "marketable" players to other teams because Russell, Schwarber and Happ are now solid .240 hitters which are a dime a dozen nowadays.
What struck the baseball nation odd was the story that in order for the Cubs to exercise the $20 million option on Cole Hamels, the team had to jettison $7 million in salary (Smyly was traded to the Rangers to clear that budget space.) Now that type of contract shuffling is what a small market team like the Royals, Rays or Marlins would be accused of doing for a long time.
The Cubs have been in the top 5 in spending, just under the luxury tax threshold. The ceiling goes up $9 million to $206 million in 2019. So one would ask why did the Cubs have issues signing Hamels if the team was getting a $9 million budget bump? Because the soft salary cap and the real Cubs payroll budget are two different things. The Cubs are already committed $350 million to 11 players. This does not include the arbitration awards for players like Bryant, Hendricks, Baez, Russell, Schwarber, Montgomery, Edwards and LaStella. Collectively, these arb players will be paid north of $40 million.
Major caveat: rich people stay rich by not losing money.
Epstein's off-the-cuff remark that the Ricketts have invested $750 million on development around Wrigley Field is telling; the Cubs are secondary in ownership's profit center mindset. You have to realize that the outside development is not owned by the Cubs team. Separate companies own the land and the development of the McDonald's block and the triangle. In fact, the Cubs are a tenant because Wrigley is owned by a different legal entity. Why would Theo know how much the Ricketts invested in the neighborhood? He was told it.
There has always been friction between Epstein, baseball operations and the "business" side of the Cubs run by Crane Kenney and Tom Ricketts. Ricketts wants a return on his "entire" investment and that includes premium events at Wrigley, i.e. concerts or play-off games. When the Cubs bowed out of the playoffs in the Wild Card game, the Cubs lost at least $30 million in gate receipts and the Ricketts enterprises (the hotel, the bars, etc.) lost more than that in revenue. If the business side had counted on annual deep playoff runs in their budget projections, this would have been a huge jolt to ownership.
Perhaps, that is why Epstein has been surly. He cannot buy his way out of bust or dead money deals like he tried to do in Boston. So he has to find a scapegoat, so the hitting coach gets fired after a year (and apparently the pitching coach, Maddon ally Jim Hickey is also out the door.) Epstein blames Maddon for not following "the plan" with Morrow to not pitch him more than two days in a row. Maddon pitched Morrow three times (an extra 6 pitches) that allegedly caused Morrow to get shut down. This deflects the fact that Morrow is a brittle arm, but it gave Epstein some ammo not to extend Maddon's contract. Joe will be a lame duck manager in 2019. And if the league trend continues, he will not be renewed as teams are now hiring inexperienced, stats-savvy guys front offices can control. Such a hiring would save the Cubs at least $5 million in 2020.
As you can tell, these seem to be like nickel and dime, petty things to do. But it may be by necessity. The Cubs have the weakest local television rights contracts for a big market team. In 2020, the Cubs were going to launch their own network. The idea of a multi-billion payday for Cubs broadcasts is now a pipe dream after the Dodgers deal blew up in Time Warner's face. Cable operators are losing subscribers in 2018 at a 300,000/month clip. People will not pay $5/month extra for a sports channel on their already high cable bills. Only a fool would pay a team a Dodger pay-out. (In a telling move, in the past few years, the Steinbrenners, who created the team channel revenue stream, have divested most of their stake in their YES network.)
It seems that Epstein has hit the wall. He is under strict budget restrictions. That is why there are no rumors, stories or hints that the Cubs are negotiating for Harper or Machado or a starting pitcher like Keuchel. Epstein cannot sign free agents without making room for them in the budget (the Hamels option). He does not have a strong minor league system to either promote players to fill needs or trade prospects for proven talent.
Fans will not complain when the Cubs went "all in" in 2016 to win the World Championship. But now Epstein is sitting a poker table with a very short stack. And he is not happy about it.
