Brett's take on Cubs finances

[Ryne Ween]

Wow. Not gonna read the article. Read a few sentences of the grant land article. I guess if this group of owner and front office are competent, than what would we look like now 5 years in with an incompetent group.

[LeftCoastCubFan]

Just a few comments. While in the short term there have been a few mistakes and a terrible product on the field, the long term prospects are great. The Ricketts bought the team under the Tribune’s terms when most other wouldn’t, but they would have not have won the bidding contest if sold through bankruptcy. Come 2020 they will have a few hundred million in revenue streams, a likely 2 to 3 billion franchise price, Zell out of the picture, and a stronger product on the field. I look forward to the future.

[Guest]

Wow. Not gonna read the article.Read a few sentences of the grant land article. I guess if this group of owner and front office are competent, than what would we look like now 5 years in with an incompetent group.

 

Well then, totally, comment away!

 

As for your second question...really? Basically what this franchise has looked like since it fell behind sometime in the 30's or something.

[Guest]

I guess if this group of owner and front office are competent, than what would we look like now 5 years in with an incompetent group.

 

They would look like the Phillies with less money, which is about as bleak a situation as you can imagine for an MLB team.

[Elwood]

The collective doom boner around here just gets the better of me at times.

 

When Theo came on in 2011, the general consensus seemed to point to 2015 as the first year of competitiveness. To my eye, that timeline is still looking very likely. The club is only two seasons into a rebuild. If a quick turnaround was expected, then I would argue that your expectations were a pipedream.

 

The farm system includes several of the most exciting prospects in the game. The front office is bigger and more analytical than ever before. The Wrigley renovations are going to happen eventually. A new TV deal is just around the corner.

 

It's an exciting time to be a Cubs fan.

[Sammy Sofa]

How dare you use my trademarked creation "doom boner."

 

Where was this "2015 general consensus" here? Seemed more like people were expecting/hoping for 2013-2014 to be showing signs of life or more. 2015 is by no means any kind of a sure thing for the team to be competitive.

 

It's been a shitty time to be a Cubs fan; it's an amazing time to be a fan of minor league baseball and FO-watching. Hopefully the rest will be exciting soon, too.

[treebird]

you have an extremely low bar for what constitutes "an exciting time to be a cubs fan" if you think two weeks before the start of a season in which we have no real chance of going even .500 suffices.

[XZero771679666304]

you have an extremely low bar for what constitutes "an exciting time to be a cubs fan" if you think two weeks before the start of a season in which we have no real chance of going even .500 suffices.

 

Would going .500 feel substantially better to you than losing 90 games? Because at the end of the day, it wouldn't feel much different to me. Non-contention sucks, and that dissatisfaction is not assuaged by the pretense of "respectability".

 

I think the Cubs are a year or two from contention, and whether we lose 80 or 90 games this year doesn't make one iota of difference, imo. I am a lot more excited about the team than I was, say, in the second half of the 2011 season.

[treebird]

you have an extremely low bar for what constitutes "an exciting time to be a cubs fan" if you think two weeks before the start of a season in which we have no real chance of going even .500 suffices.

 

Would going .500 feel substantially better to you than losing 90 games? Because at the end of the day, it wouldn't feel much different to me. Non-contention sucks, and that dissatisfaction is not assuaged by the pretense of "respectability".

 

I think the Cubs are a year or two from contention, and whether we lose 80 or 90 games this year doesn't make one iota of difference, imo. I am a lot more excited about the team than I was, say, in the second half of the 2011 season.

 

yes i would much prefer to win 81 games than 65. i like watching baseball, and if the cubs aren't a miserable sack of [expletive], i get to keep doing that for the whole season instead of willing myself to forget they exist by the second week of june.

[XZero771679666304]

you have an extremely low bar for what constitutes "an exciting time to be a cubs fan" if you think two weeks before the start of a season in which we have no real chance of going even .500 suffices.

 

Would going .500 feel substantially better to you than losing 90 games? Because at the end of the day, it wouldn't feel much different to me. Non-contention sucks, and that dissatisfaction is not assuaged by the pretense of "respectability".

 

I think the Cubs are a year or two from contention, and whether we lose 80 or 90 games this year doesn't make one iota of difference, imo. I am a lot more excited about the team than I was, say, in the second half of the 2011 season.

 

yes i would much prefer to win 81 games than 65. i like watching baseball, and if the cubs aren't a miserable sack of [expletive], i get to keep doing that for the whole season instead of willing myself to forget they exist by the second week of june.

 

I'll always find/create/rationalize a reason to watch, but every year that the Cubs aren't contending kind of feels the same to me. Last year was rough because we didn't even have good individual performances to watch, but even in the worst seasons there is usually a somewhat compelling reason for me to tune in.

 

Now the light at the end of the tunnel is pretty close, and I just don't really care if the Cubs go 81-81 or 71-91 in 2014, nor do I think 5-10 games either way portends anything substantial for the future.

[Soul]

Seemed more like people were expecting/hoping for 2013-2014 to be showing signs of life or more. 2015 is by no means any kind of a sure thing for the team to be competitive.

 

I recall 2014. Maybe that wasn't coming from the FO, but there was a general expectation that this year the Cubs would start being competitive. It's been very frustrating for me to see that slip -- first to 2015, then 2016. Now this well-written article is throwing around 2019.

 

We can debate what has gone well and what hasn't -- what Ricketts expected and what he didn't.

But there is no doubt his plan has suffered some serious setbacks.

[jersey cubs fan]

I'll always find/create/rationalize a reason to watch, but every year that the Cubs aren't contending kind of feels the same to me. Last year was rough because we didn't even have good individual performances to watch, but even in the worst seasons there is usually a somewhat compelling reason for me to tune in.

 

Now the light at the end of the tunnel is pretty close, and I just don't really care if the Cubs go 81-81 or 71-91 in 2014, nor do I think 5-10 games either way portends anything substantial for the future.

 

A season that the Cubs finish at .500 is going to feel a lot different than a season in which they do what they've been doing of late because .500 is going to feel like contention for a good deal of the season.

[Soul]

Also, I'd assume part of what gets the Cubs to .500 this year is having a few of our future pieces perform well at the major league level.

[jersey cubs fan]

The collective doom boner around here just gets the better of me at times.

 

It is intellectually dishonest to talk about a collective doom boner on here. I would argue it is aggressively ignorant to talk about it actually. This isn't a group of fans following a good team and unable to enjoy it. This isn't a good team just going through a brief period of struggles. There isn't an unjustified level of fear about the team doing poorly despite evidence pointing toward success.

 

This is a god damn awful baseball team that has been awful for several years and an ownership/management group that has done nothing to make it better.

 

This isn't a farm system competition. This isn't a league that hands out trophies based on rankings of prospects. The only thing that matters is wins and losses by the major league team and this major league team loses far too often to pretend these are good times.

 

Only a truly idiotic person would accuse a Cubs fan of being unfairly critical of what the organization has done.

[Soul]

Honestly, it often feels like some just don't want to admit that the idea that the Cubs' current owners might not be very good at owning the Cubs is a real possibility. I don't think that's something anyone can definitively say right now, but there sure seems to be some real defensiveness in terms of explaining away things where it seems like the Ricketts have either misjudged the situation, screwed up or just plain dropped the ball.

 

Well, it takes you to a pretty dark place once you admit that your owner is mediocre. There's not much that can be done to fix that. So I can actually understand the defensiveness a little.

[sneakypower]

you have an extremely low bar for what constitutes "an exciting time to be a cubs fan" if you think two weeks before the start of a season in which we have no real chance of going even .500 suffices.

it's an exciting time to be a(n iowa) cubs fan

[jersey cubs fan]

Honestly, it often feels like some just don't want to admit that the idea that the Cubs' current owners might not be very good at owning the Cubs is a real possibility. I don't think that's something anyone can definitively say right now, but there sure seems to be some real defensiveness in terms of explaining away things where it seems like the Ricketts have either misjudged the situation, screwed up or just plain dropped the ball.

 

Well, it takes you to a pretty dark place once you admit that your owner is mediocre. There's not much that can be done to fix that. So I can actually understand the defensiveness a little.

 

It's not like you can't win titles with a mediocre owner. That's hardly a dark place.

[Derwood]

 

This is a [expletive] awful baseball team that has been awful for several years and an ownership/management group that has done nothing to make it better.

 

Nothing?

[SouthSideRyan]

Just a few comments. While in the short term there have been a few mistakes and a terrible product on the field, the long term prospects are great. The Ricketts bought the team under the Tribune’s terms when most other wouldn’t, but they would have not have won the bidding contest if sold through bankruptcy. Come 2020 they will have a few hundred million in revenue streams, a likely 2 to 3 billion franchise price, Zell out of the picture, and a stronger product on the field. I look forward to the future.

 

Are you talking about the long term prospects of the ricketts family trust?

[jersey cubs fan]

 

This is a [expletive] awful baseball team that has been awful for several years and an ownership/management group that has done nothing to make it better.

 

Nothing?

 

Has it gotten better? No. There has been zero effort to making the major league team competitive.

[Soul]

Honestly, it often feels like some just don't want to admit that the idea that the Cubs' current owners might not be very good at owning the Cubs is a real possibility. I don't think that's something anyone can definitively say right now, but there sure seems to be some real defensiveness in terms of explaining away things where it seems like the Ricketts have either misjudged the situation, screwed up or just plain dropped the ball.

 

Well, it takes you to a pretty dark place once you admit that your owner is mediocre. There's not much that can be done to fix that. So I can actually understand the defensiveness a little.

 

It's not like you can't win titles with a mediocre owner. That's hardly a dark place.

 

Surely it reduces the likelihood of sustained winning.

[jersey cubs fan]

Honestly, it often feels like some just don't want to admit that the idea that the Cubs' current owners might not be very good at owning the Cubs is a real possibility. I don't think that's something anyone can definitively say right now, but there sure seems to be some real defensiveness in terms of explaining away things where it seems like the Ricketts have either misjudged the situation, screwed up or just plain dropped the ball.

 

Well, it takes you to a pretty dark place once you admit that your owner is mediocre. There's not much that can be done to fix that. So I can actually understand the defensiveness a little.

 

It's not like you can't win titles with a mediocre owner. That's hardly a dark place.

 

Surely it reduces the likelihood of sustained winning.

 

What the hell has Bill Dewitt ever done?

[Sammy Sofa]

Just a few comments. While in the short term there have been a few mistakes and a terrible product on the field, the long term prospects are great. The Ricketts bought the team under the Tribune’s terms when most other wouldn’t, but they would have not have won the bidding contest if sold through bankruptcy. Come 2020 they will have a few hundred million in revenue streams, a likely 2 to 3 billion franchise price, Zell out of the picture, and a stronger product on the field. I look forward to the future.

 

Are you talking about the long term prospects of the ricketts family trust?

 

Hey man, it's only 2010; taking a decade to actually fully own the team and to be able to just spend like they did...ten years prior...that.s just how it's done. Baseball works like a 401k, ah-doy.

[Sammys Boombox]

I guess from all of the hours I have wasted reading about "The Baseball Plan" and "The Business Plan" and reading everyone's opinions on the matter. This is what I think is closest to reality.

 

Ricketts agreed to these terms because nobody else would. He basically had nobody to bid against, so he got the team. Yay for him, but if he had not caved maybe somebody else could have bought the team without those restrictions and it would have been better for the fans.

 

Of course, that is assuming that whoever bought the team was buying them with the intent of making them this world-class organization. That is not a guarantee. This would-be owner is a huge question mark. Would they have been more successful in their endeavors in terms of the renovation? What approach would they have taken in hiring the baseball executives? Would they have a long-term plan at all? In general, I think if Mark Cuban bought the team more on his terms we would be in much better shape, but that is speculation.

 

Since the moment Ricketts bought the team I think he has attempted to do what was in the best interest of the long-term success of the on-field product. They have failed, or at least been delayed in succeeding in areas (renovations, major league productivity, still no agreement on a TV deal), but I do trust that he is trying to do what he thinks is best for the fans.

 

At the moment I would say that I am torn on how I feel about Ricketts buying the team. I do believe that they will eventually build an organization that is dominating at times and competing most of the time, but I think the sale terms that he agreed to have pushed back the beginning of that window much later than it had to be. At this point, if it is 2016 or later when the Cubs first play in a NLDS, they better be going to 15 of the next 20 NLDS. That is a high bar, but if these people are so smart at what they are doing and have this long to take advantage of the system, anything much less and I will not be pleased.

[Elwood]

The collective doom boner around here just gets the better of me at times.

 

It is intellectually dishonest to talk about a collective doom boner on here. I would argue it is aggressively ignorant to talk about it actually. This isn't a group of fans following a good team and unable to enjoy it. This isn't a good team just going through a brief period of struggles. There isn't an unjustified level of fear about the team doing poorly despite evidence pointing toward success.

 

This is a [expletive] awful baseball team that has been awful for several years and an ownership/management group that has done nothing to make it better.

 

This isn't a farm system competition. This isn't a league that hands out trophies based on rankings of prospects. The only thing that matters is wins and losses by the major league team and this major league team loses far too often to pretend these are good times.

 

Only a truly idiotic person would accuse a Cubs fan of being unfairly critical of what the organization has done.

 

Once it became apparent that the club was tackling a full rebuild, wins and losses became the things that mattered least to me. Why would I give a flying [expletive] about the difference between finishing third in the division or fifth? One would have to be "aggressively ignorant" to live and die with every game during a rebuild.

 

Instead, I root for the process, and there's a lot to be happy about.