So...Now What?

[Cubswin11]

 

Are we really questioning the bonafides of Boston's qualification of sustained success?

All these teams that are alleged pillars for sustained success literally have 60-70 win seasons within the last few years was my point. They’ve all had down/selling years. I know we’re all pissed at the Cubs and where they are now but the spot they’re in isn’t unique. They very well could be back to a 80-90 win team next year with the flexibility they have and have a pretty damn good prospect foundation, much like the teams referenced who have had down years in the past few years matched with success.

 

By all accounts the returns on the trades we made were very good and the system was already trending up. I’ll wait until the offseason to see what kind of spending/trades they make to pass judgment on if they really are going full tank again or maintaining some kind of success/competitiveness. They have close to $100 mil to spend on the cheap side if they’re trying at all and still able to run a lower payroll than they have in a long time.

The Cubs are on pace for as many 90 loss seasons as 90 win seasons over the past decade. We're talking different stratospheres of rebuilding and sustained success here.

Choosing the endpoints can let you make any argument you want, but since 2014 (not quite a decade) they haven’t lost 90 games and have more seasons over 90 wins than not. They’ve had pretty good sustained success since 2015. There’s a clear path to be back to being a successful team next year that doesn’t take an amount money they’ve never spent before + the prospect capital they have to make moves. If they can maneuver enough this offseason there’s a way to keep a pretty competitive team, for the most part, since 2015 going pretty strong in to the 2020s here.

 

But maybe they literally won’t spend anything and suck and not try and Jed is bad at his job and we’re stuck in a 60-70 win cycle for a while. Who knows. I’m willing to wait until the offseason to decide.

[Bertz]

Yeah, the Dodgers are the platonic ideal, the Yankees dipped around 2015/2016 but not particularly hard, and then I'm not sure there's anyone else we should be looking at longingly in this regard.

 

And there's a reason we're talking about the dominant LA and NY teams and Boston. They are big market clubs with every resource and advantage at their disposal that 85% of baseball does not have. The Cubs are the dominant big market team in Chicago and we've had to make player acquisition decisions based on things like how long Zobrist is going to be dealing with that thing with his wife? and when fans can attend games again?

 

Does being a dominant big market team guarantee near consistent success? No. But it should be the aim of a team like the Cubs, and fans should have that expectation.

 

Maybe it's a little unfair to put group Chicago in with New York whose metro population is more than double Chicago's or even LA who has about 50% more people. Chicago is much closer to Dallas/Houston than NY. But it is bigger and historically we have not used that to our advantage.

 

As long as the luxury tax is a thing, I don't think comparing the Cubs to the Dodgers or Yankees is unreasonable. If all the teams were balling out payroll wise, we could complain about their extra revenue.

 

Unfortunately we're not, and that's kind of my point. The Cubs are a well run team generally in that top tier of payroll. The Dodgers are what we want to be. They've gotten the waves and waves that we were promised, even while making a trade for a superstar every 12-18 months. They've shown that it is possible.

 

Every single other team though? They've all had a dip. And except for the Yankees, it has been a pronounced one. Boston has had I believe 3 top ten picks the last decade and sold Mookie Betts. They bounced right back, and that's explicitly what Jed is trying to do. He has literally name checked them as the blueprint. But short of being as amazing as the Dodgers, your options are to be like Boston or the White Sox and sell guys before you fully bottom out, or to be like the Phillies or Giants and ride things to the very end and stare down the barrel of a 4-5 year rebuild.

 

I look at the landscape, and I basically see the Dodgers as the team we should aspire to be, and then 29 teams that run on cycles. Like we don't have to pretend the Cubs are unique. They're not.

[UMFan83]

 

Which period during the Yankees 28 year streak of finishing over .500 were they rebuilding? Yes there were some years where they clearly werent as dominant, and there was at least 1 year where they were sellers at the deadline but that will happen to everyone but the Dodgers. They retooled yet but never rebuilt.

 

The Red Sox have had some down years so I partially retract because with the Cubs we're hoping for a 2 year playoff drought (21 and 22) and then back to relevancy (could definitely be longer but that's what everyone seems to be hoping). They have made big selling trades but always seem to spring back up after 1-2 years. So maybe the Cubs are more of their model. But they've only had 2 years since the early 90s where they've been truly a bad team like the Cubs are right now and will possibly be next year. Not saying that winning 78 games is any sort of big success but its not the depths the Cubs dealt with between 2010-2014 or what we have now. The avoidance of having a truly terrible pointless baseball team is the lowest bar to clear when you are gauging sustained success.

 

Eh, I guess I don't acknowledge the nuance in the way you guys use "retool" and "rebuild". To me thats corporate speak to sell us on revamping the team. In 2014 we weren't "rebuilding" either, we were acquiring long term assets! It becomes a rebuild if you have bad luck or do a bad job and everything takes long than it's supposed to. I think the Cubs should be able to be Yankees like competitive very soon, so I am not seeing the difference.

 

It's a pretty easy distinction IMO. The Cubs from 2012-2014 were rebuilding. They completely gutted the team, lost as many games as they could, established a new identify, etc. Retooling is keeping the same core in place and trying to use trades to better the team in the long term while in the short term having a couple down years. The Yankees in 2016 is the most extreme lightest retool ever but its a good example. The 2016 Yankees were a decent team, but not a contender. They knew Teixeira and ARod were retiring and had guys like Judge/Severino/Sanchez coming up. They traded away two valuable relievers and got several good prospects back. In 2017 they were in the ALCS.

 

That's a retool in the purest sense of the word but obviously there is a lot of grey area between the 2016 yankees and the 2012 Cubs.

[Sammy Sofa]

Man, some people act like the Ricketts being a bunch of high pockets con artists who want to spend as little money on the actual team as possible is such a CRAZY idea, despite every America professional sport being horsefeathering LITTERED with these types of mooks.

[Cubswin11]

Man, some people act like the Ricketts being a bunch of high pockets con artists who want to spend as little money on the actual team as possible is such a CRAZY idea, despite every America professional sport being horsefeathering LITTERED with these types of mooks.

While this is mostly true they’ve still ran $200+ mil payrolls a few times and always have ran mid-high $100 mil payrolls for the most part. The idea/hope is they won’t turn to running Brewers/Royals type $80 mil payrolls, that obviously is a problem and unacceptable. But assuming they’ll run a $150-180 mil payroll again this offseason there are tons of possibilities and a pretty easy track to get back to being competing again, that also doesn’t necessarily including giving out and huge 9 figure deals to players.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Man, some people act like the Ricketts being a bunch of high pockets con artists who want to spend as little money on the actual team as possible is such a CRAZY idea, despite every America professional sport being horsefeathering LITTERED with these types of mooks.

 

I would flip this, to be honest. There's people saying that the Cubs will have financial resources available that tanking for several seasons is not the likely/intended path that they'll go, and there's plenty of reason to believe this(historical payroll, paying to optimize prospect return this July, the fact that a certain level of spending is better for the team's revenue, etc). I in particular keep trying to point out that ownership having a tighter wallet than 2016-2019 and the Cubs having lots of money to accelerate the 're-tool' are not mutually exclusive ideas. Those voices are largely being countered by vague appeals to ownership's stinginess as their defining attribute or the insistence that ownership will require bottoming out payroll before spending again for reasons that aren't entirely clear(or supported by their history).

[Sammy Sofa]

Yeah, great, they were willing to throw down huge cash to go all in once they lucked out getting Theo and Theo horsefeathering lucked out with his plans. And doing that resulted in the WS, EXTRA luckily...but why does it seem so crazy unrealistic that these assholes will just continue skating by on what little payroll they can while instead focusing on milking Cubs Inc. as an overall moneymaking venture?

 

I think it's potentially HUGELY misguided to look at past spending as anything other than a big investment gamble to get this business organization set up as the perpetual moneymaker they want it to reliably be. These guys are traditional rich horsefeathering cowards; they're gonna take the safe bet 9 times out of 10, and we already got the outlier out of the way. And with the way things turned out, they got the outs they'd prefer with the way this team/core spiraled, and now they can settle in on spending as little as they can get away with on the payroll with the idea that so long as the team trips over a competitive season or two every few seasons. I mean, why is this so unrealistic? We see owner upon owner doing the same horsefeathering thing with teams far less popular. The idea that enough Cubs fans wouldn't stand for it is complete horse horsefeathers.

 

It basically comes down to, "well, of course they'll spend a lot again!" When the reality is we see so many horsefeathering owners just...not doing it. Why the horsefeathers should we assume the Ricketts will come through when everything they've done for years now has been garbage?

Edited August 12, 2021 by Sammy Sofa

[Backtobanks]

My assumption is we're in for another true tank. If reality is somehow immediately going hard to compete again in 2022, I could actually live with the occassional mid-year tank sell off every 4-5 years. Kimbrell and Chaffin were the only non-rentals they sold off right?

 

If it's a one year tank... Lame. If it's a multi year tank, im done with em.

 

This team is 3 years from being good unless PTR decides to spend big and I betting that's not going to happen.

[Tim]

My assumption is we're in for another true tank. If reality is somehow immediately going hard to compete again in 2022, I could actually live with the occassional mid-year tank sell off every 4-5 years. Kimbrell and Chaffin were the only non-rentals they sold off right?

 

If it's a one year tank... Lame. If it's a multi year tank, im done with em.

 

This team is 3 years from being good unless PTR decides to spend big and I betting that's not going to happen.

There are at least two reasonable paths in this thread alone to being good or better next year. TT's doesn't even involve the team spending big.

[CubinNY]

I think ole' Tom and the other owners who manage MLB have a good idea of what the CBA strategy is going to be. I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Yeah, great, they were willing to throw down huge cash to go all in once they lucked out getting Theo and Theo horsefeathering lucked out with his plans. And doing that resulted in the WS, EXTRA luckily...but why does it seem so crazy unrealistic that these horsefeathers will just continue skating by on what little payroll they can while instead focusing on milking Cubs Inc. as an overall moneymaking venture?

 

I think it's potentially HUGELY misguided to look at past spending as anything other than a big investment gamble to get this business organization set up as the perpetual moneymaker they want it to reliably be. These guys are traditional rich horsefeathering cowards; they're gonna take the safe bet 9 times out of 10, and we already got the outlier out of the way. And with the way things turned out, they got the outs they'd prefer with the way this team/core spiraled, and now they can settle in on spending as little as they can get away with on the payroll with the idea that so long as the team trips over a competitive season or two every few seasons. I mean, why is this so unrealistic? We see owner upon owner doing the same horsefeathering thing with teams far less popular. The idea that enough Cubs fans wouldn't stand for it is complete horse horsefeathers.

 

One is that it doesn't make much sense for them. They just invested a zillion dollars into Wrigleyville and the gameday experience, and while the Cubs have a high base of support there's a demonstrable difference in that potential revenue when the team is good or not good. Attendance has varied from 400k-600k/year depending on the relative badness or goodness of the team in the Ricketts era, and that's stated attendance which is going to underrate the real revenue impact of people who don't bother to use tickets when the team is bad, and further compounded by having so much revenue generated from Wrigleyville outside ticket sales.

 

Moreover, this type of FUD is rarely specific or taken to its logical conclusion. If cost controls uber alles were the best profit maximizing lever to pull, then wouldn't the Ricketts want to drop the payroll to the bottom of the league? Even the most pessimistic folks don't seem to think(or say out loud) that the Cubs are about to become the Marlins, so they seem to intuitively understand there is a level of spending that is necessary for the overall moneymaking venture. But I rarely(ever?) hear what folks think or fear that level is, so it's impossible to speak to how likely that outcome is, or if accurate how damaging that would be to the original conversation about the Cubs' competitive timeline, which grinds that conversation to a halt.

[Sammy Sofa]

I think ole' Tom and the other owners who manage MLB have a good idea of what the CBA strategy is going to be. I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

 

Yeah, there's the other big thing why past spending doesn't mean horsefeathers for me; the owners knew what was coming. I think the Cubs managing to sneak out a WS win under the Ricketts in 2016 will end up arguably being one of the worst aspects of being stuck with them owning the team probably forever. They renovated the stadium, they got their godforsaken TV channel, and they're set up to have their horsefeathers ass Wrigleyville Theme Park Emporium in perpetuity. They've horsefeathering lied for years now about what money would be available and how it would come back to the team. IMO, it's not even a matter of trying to guess about what they're going to do: they've been horsefeathering telling us with those dopey smiles on their faces over and over and over again.

[Cubswin11]

For the people who think a full on strip down and tank for multiple years is coming, where do you think payroll ends up then? Because nothing historically points to them spending less then ~$150 mil or so and that gives them nearly ~$100 mil to spend this offseason. TT is right, I think they’ve done the calculus that they need to be around there to maximize the other profit centers they’ve invested in around the team. Becoming the Marlins, Royals, Cleveland, Brewers, etc isn’t happening. Edited August 12, 2021 by Cubswin11

[Sammy Sofa]

Business cowards always, ALWAYS will prefer to take the long term steady but lower profit over the short term hit to make more money in the long run whenever possible.

 

Yeah, spending on the team to increase attendance to Mr. Wants to vote for Santorum's Fantasmagorical Cubs Shmegorium makes more sense to you, but odds are they are perfectly happy with the steady lower profit than the up and down hits to their precious, precious quarterly reports from those pesky big contracts that those mean ol' greedy players want.

 

Again, the Ricketts haven't been shy about showing us who they are.

[Sammy Sofa]

For the people who think a full on strip down and tank for multiple years is coming, where do you think payroll ends up then? Because nothing historically points to them spending less then ~$150 mil or so and that gives them nearly ~$100 mil to spend this offseason. TT is right, I think they’ve done the calculus that they need to be around there to maximize the other profit centers they’ve invested in around the team. Becoming the Marlins, Royals, Cleveland, Brewers, etc isn’t happening.

 

Man, I'll bet the Ricketts sweatily rub their bumps every day looking at what the Brewers have been doing for the last almost 15 years. I guarantee you they want that kind of horsefeathers with a fanbase like the Cubs' SOOOOOOO horsefeathering bad.

[CubinNY]

FWIW, I think the Ricketts are smartish business people and will spend as much as is necessary to make the team competitive, but one thing that gnaws at me is Tom's multiple statements about attendance being tied to spending. It's sort of a chicken/egg thing, but I'm guessing they have an idea of what that number is and will rely on "the baseball" people to make the best team within whatever limit they have set.

 

Wrigley will always be a destination for out of town fans and I think they are banking on that too, only the bulk of that money goes to the side business and not the Cubs.

[UMFan83]

Yeah, great, they were willing to throw down huge cash to go all in once they lucked out getting Theo and Theo horsefeathering lucked out with his plans. And doing that resulted in the WS, EXTRA luckily...but why does it seem so crazy unrealistic that these horsefeathers will just continue skating by on what little payroll they can while instead focusing on milking Cubs Inc. as an overall moneymaking venture?

 

I think it's potentially HUGELY misguided to look at past spending as anything other than a big investment gamble to get this business organization set up as the perpetual moneymaker they want it to reliably be. These guys are traditional rich horsefeathering cowards; they're gonna take the safe bet 9 times out of 10, and we already got the outlier out of the way. And with the way things turned out, they got the outs they'd prefer with the way this team/core spiraled, and now they can settle in on spending as little as they can get away with on the payroll with the idea that so long as the team trips over a competitive season or two every few seasons. I mean, why is this so unrealistic? We see owner upon owner doing the same horsefeathering thing with teams far less popular. The idea that enough Cubs fans wouldn't stand for it is complete horse horsefeathers.

 

One is that it doesn't make much sense for them. They just invested a zillion dollars into Wrigleyville and the gameday experience, and while the Cubs have a high base of support there's a demonstrable difference in that potential revenue when the team is good or not good. Attendance has varied from 400k-600k/year depending on the relative badness or goodness of the team in the Ricketts era, and that's stated attendance which is going to underrate the real revenue impact of people who don't bother to use tickets when the team is bad, and further compounded by having so much revenue generated from Wrigleyville outside ticket sales.

 

Moreover, this type of FUD is rarely specific or taken to its logical conclusion. If cost controls uber alles were the best profit maximizing lever to pull, then wouldn't the Ricketts want to drop the payroll to the bottom of the league? Even the most pessimistic folks don't seem to think(or say out loud) that the Cubs are about to become the Marlins, so they seem to intuitively understand there is a level of spending that is necessary for the overall moneymaking venture. But I rarely(ever?) hear what folks think or fear that level is, so it's impossible to speak to how likely that outcome is, or if accurate how damaging that would be to the original conversation about the Cubs' competitive timeline, which grinds that conversation to a halt.

 

No they wouldnt go as far as to drop to the lowest payroll in the league. Tom is very image conscious and seems to take criticisms personally. No amount of profit is worth being an all-time villain, and I'm not sure the league would allow them to continue owning the team if they ran out a $20m payroll every year.

 

My belief is that they are willing to spend to a point, but if you try to cross that point, winning becomes secondary to profits. Even if they have to bail on a 6+ year window halfway through, forcing the team to sign Descalso and wait to see how long Zobrist is going to be gone from the team before signing Kimbrel. Did Theo and Jed overextend their line of credit in 2018? Did the Ricketts family allow them some temporary flexibility to get out of the mess they built? No, they werent allowed to make any moves until they cleared payroll and it mostly stayed that way as the Cubs looked less and less like a championship contender in 2019 and 2020. Don't forget that to get that window open we purposely lost for 3+ years with a payroll resembling a small market team.

[pccubfan]

Yeah, great, they were willing to throw down huge cash to go all in once they lucked out getting Theo and Theo horsefeathering lucked out with his plans. And doing that resulted in the WS, EXTRA luckily...but why does it seem so crazy unrealistic that these horsefeathers will just continue skating by on what little payroll they can while instead focusing on milking Cubs Inc. as an overall moneymaking venture?

 

I think it's potentially HUGELY misguided to look at past spending as anything other than a big investment gamble to get this business organization set up as the perpetual moneymaker they want it to reliably be. These guys are traditional rich horsefeathering cowards; they're gonna take the safe bet 9 times out of 10, and we already got the outlier out of the way. And with the way things turned out, they got the outs they'd prefer with the way this team/core spiraled, and now they can settle in on spending as little as they can get away with on the payroll with the idea that so long as the team trips over a competitive season or two every few seasons. I mean, why is this so unrealistic? We see owner upon owner doing the same horsefeathering thing with teams far less popular. The idea that enough Cubs fans wouldn't stand for it is complete horse horsefeathers.

 

One is that it doesn't make much sense for them. They just invested a zillion dollars into Wrigleyville and the gameday experience, and while the Cubs have a high base of support there's a demonstrable difference in that potential revenue when the team is good or not good. Attendance has varied from 400k-600k/year depending on the relative badness or goodness of the team in the Ricketts era, and that's stated attendance which is going to underrate the real revenue impact of people who don't bother to use tickets when the team is bad, and further compounded by having so much revenue generated from Wrigleyville outside ticket sales.

 

Moreover, this type of FUD is rarely specific or taken to its logical conclusion. If cost controls uber alles were the best profit maximizing lever to pull, then wouldn't the Ricketts want to drop the payroll to the bottom of the league? Even the most pessimistic folks don't seem to think(or say out loud) that the Cubs are about to become the Marlins, so they seem to intuitively understand there is a level of spending that is necessary for the overall moneymaking venture. But I rarely(ever?) hear what folks think or fear that level is, so it's impossible to speak to how likely that outcome is, or if accurate how damaging that would be to the original conversation about the Cubs' competitive timeline, which grinds that conversation to a halt.

 

No they wouldnt go as far as to drop to the lowest payroll in the league. Tom is very image conscious and seems to take criticisms personally. No amount of profit is worth being an all-time villain, and I'm not sure the league would allow them to continue owning the team if they ran out a $20m payroll every year.

 

My belief is that they are willing to spend to a point, but if you try to cross that point, winning becomes secondary to profits. Even if they have to bail on a 6+ year window halfway through, forcing the team to sign Descalso and wait to see how long Zobrist is going to be gone from the team before signing Kimbrel. Did Theo and Jed overextend their line of credit in 2018? Did the Ricketts family allow them some temporary flexibility to get out of the mess they built? No, they werent allowed to make any moves until they cleared payroll and it mostly stayed that way as the Cubs looked less and less like a championship contender in 2019 and 2020. Don't forget that to get that window open we purposely lost for 3+ years with a payroll resembling a small market team.

 

I don't disagree, but that was before they spent all the money around Wrigley. They have to have fans there to cover the expense of that capital outlay. If the fans' perception is that ownership is not trying, it isn't only the team that is going to lose.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I think ole' Tom and the other owners who manage MLB have a good idea of what the CBA strategy is going to be. I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

 

Yeah, there's the other big thing why past spending doesn't mean horsefeathers for me; the owners knew what was coming. I think the Cubs managing to sneak out a WS win under the Ricketts in 2016 will end up arguably being one of the worst aspects of being stuck with them owning the team probably forever. They renovated the stadium, they got their godforsaken TV channel, and they're set up to have their horsefeathers ass Wrigleyville Theme Park Emporium in perpetuity. They've horsefeathering lied for years now about what money would be available and how it would come back to the team. IMO, it's not even a matter of trying to guess about what they're going to do: they've been horsefeathering telling us with those dopey smiles on their faces over and over and over again.

 

The Cubs increased payroll every year from 2015 to 2019 and increased their rank among MLB teams every year in that span but one(2017, where they held flat). In 2018, two years after the WS and after the Wrigleyville Theme Park Emporium was functionally complete, they raised payroll 10 million and paid top dollar for a long term deal for Darvish. The following year they pushed it higher and exceeded the LT after being under it since 2016. You see how there's at least some doubt about this idea that they just did what they needed to in order to get the target of the moment(world series, hype for the renovations) and now it's all gonna get slashed to the bone?

 

And to make sure we don't lose the plot here, this is not an endorsement of ownership. The point here is that you have folks saying that ownership is not going to financially slam the door on a quick turnaround for 2022+, and others saying that those people are suckers. There's room for the Ricketts to be greedy slugs and for the team to have that flexibility. They can cut 25 million off this year's payroll and the Cubs could still have lots of flexibility to improve to a solid team next year, that's how low the payroll baseline is. That'd be a crummy thing for ownership to do and worth criticizing! Those two thoughts can coexist, especially since they very much have for several years running now in terms of team quality v. ownership investment.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Don't forget that to get that window open we purposely lost for 3+ years with a payroll resembling a small market team.

 

The team's payroll rank for those 3 years was 9th, 14th, and 19th, for an easy to calculate average of 14th. That equates to a ~125-130 million payroll in 2021, the White Sox, Twins, and Braves are all right there if you want a mental image. This is the crux of what I'm getting at, I'm not even saying the ideology is 100% wrong but when you actually put specifics to it you don't have to write off the immediate future the way the team did in 2012. Things might be much worse than they ought to be(and also might not, see my post above), but that doesn't mean catastrophic things for the next 3 years.

[UMFan83]

Don't forget that to get that window open we purposely lost for 3+ years with a payroll resembling a small market team.

 

The team's payroll rank for those 3 years was 9th, 14th, and 19th, for an easy to calculate average of 14th. That equates to a ~125-130 million payroll in 2021, the White Sox, Twins, and Braves are all right there if you want a mental image. This is the crux of what I'm getting at, I'm not even saying the ideology is 100% wrong but when you actually put specifics to it you don't have to write off the immediate future the way the team did in 2012. Things might be much worse than they ought to be(and also might not, see my post above), but that doesn't mean catastrophic things for the next 3 years.

 

I almost said a low midmarket team but small market team sounded cooler and didnt think anyone would call me out on it. :D

 

I just can't remember ever seeing a bad team become a good team in 2 years with ~80% of the team being acquired during the interim. Yes teams often bring up prospects, but how many current prospects do you see being a part of the 2023 team? What does the Cubs projected payroll look like after arb raises? $60m? I just can't see Jed spending $65-70m this offseason to get the payroll up to that $125-$130 level. Maybe I'm wrong, as that could be like 3-4 players these days.

[WrigleyField 22]

Don't forget that to get that window open we purposely lost for 3+ years with a payroll resembling a small market team.

 

The team's payroll rank for those 3 years was 9th, 14th, and 19th, for an easy to calculate average of 14th. That equates to a ~125-130 million payroll in 2021, the White Sox, Twins, and Braves are all right there if you want a mental image. This is the crux of what I'm getting at, I'm not even saying the ideology is 100% wrong but when you actually put specifics to it you don't have to write off the immediate future the way the team did in 2012. Things might be much worse than they ought to be(and also might not, see my post above), but that doesn't mean catastrophic things for the next 3 years.

 

I almost said a low midmarket team but small market team sounded cooler and didnt think anyone would call me out on it. :D

 

I just can't remember ever seeing a bad team become a good team in 2 years with ~80% of the team being acquired during the interim. Yes teams often bring up prospects, but how many current prospects do you see being a part of the 2023 team? What does the Cubs projected payroll look like after arb raises? $60m? I just can't see Jed spending $65-70m this offseason to get the payroll up to that $125-$130 level. Maybe I'm wrong, as that could be like 3-4 players these days.

I don't know about 80%, but I'm reminded of this 538 article.

 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-2016-cubs-won-just-like-the-1997-marlins-did/

[d_money]

Cubs average ticket price is what…in the top 5? It’ll be a slap in the face to the season ticket holders if they don’t spend big in the off-season.

 

What a shitty product on the field

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Don't forget that to get that window open we purposely lost for 3+ years with a payroll resembling a small market team.

 

The team's payroll rank for those 3 years was 9th, 14th, and 19th, for an easy to calculate average of 14th. That equates to a ~125-130 million payroll in 2021, the White Sox, Twins, and Braves are all right there if you want a mental image. This is the crux of what I'm getting at, I'm not even saying the ideology is 100% wrong but when you actually put specifics to it you don't have to write off the immediate future the way the team did in 2012. Things might be much worse than they ought to be(and also might not, see my post above), but that doesn't mean catastrophic things for the next 3 years.

 

I almost said a low midmarket team but small market team sounded cooler and didnt think anyone would call me out on it. :D

 

I just can't remember ever seeing a bad team become a good team in 2 years with ~80% of the team being acquired during the interim. Yes teams often bring up prospects, but how many current prospects do you see being a part of the 2023 team? What does the Cubs projected payroll look like after arb raises? $60m? I just can't see Jed spending $65-70m this offseason to get the payroll up to that $125-$130 level. Maybe I'm wrong, as that could be like 3-4 players these days.

 

Let’s think about this in extremely broad terms. Unscientifically, to be a playoff team, the Cubs need 10 above average position players(w/2-3 stars), 4 above average SP(with 2 stars), and a decent or better bullpen. Right now I think you can say the 2022-2023 Cubs have a decent shot at having 5 or 6 of those position players in the org already(Contreras, Davis, Hoerner, Madrigal, 1-2 of Wisdom/Happ/Deichmann), 1-2 SP(Hendricks + the best of current AAAA options + Kilian), and can hope they have a good org philosophy and depth to be okay in the pen. That means they need 4-5 position players and 2-3 SP over 2 offseasons to reach that point for 2023. Also, take these definitions seriously but not literally. You can be above average and be the fat part of a platoon, or be a 2.3 WAR SP that you don’t want pitching twice in a playoff series. None of this is guaranteed, it’s meant to be illustrative of a non-trivial possibility.

 

Now let’s layer on the payroll. A 2022 26 man roster of players currently under team control is likely to run around 75 million, the only arb eligibles that aren’t around the minimum/non-tender candidates are Willson and Happ. Even in the situation where we say ownership says “hey, until we see progress that a playoff team(or just not losing to the Brewers each game by 11 runs) is imminent, payroll needs to stay around 125 million”, you can see a path from here to there. Pay for a FA position player and SP you believe in, then do it again after the proof of concept in 2022. Have a player development and/or distressed asset win or 2(a la Valbuena or Montero). If you’re close, consider trading from prospect depth for a good piece(a la Chapman). A one year/post-prime free agent has a strong year(a la Jay or Hammel), maybe a prospect accelerates their timeline(Canario?). You can see how you can get close to that line of being a playoff caliber/contending team without having to jump payroll to 175 million.

 

This isn’t meant to imply that the road is wide or that it’s easy or certain to get to that outcome, lots of stuff can go wrong even if you have a higher baseline of talent on the roster, as the last couple years have shown. But crucially, there’s not much opportunity cost to the approach here. Maybe you’d rather save scarce dollars for a bigger investment in fewer players, but that’s an evergreen problem and often solves itself through the inevitable ebbs and flows(e.g. Happ and Bote’s money disappears, a pop up prospect saves you money on bench players, etc).

[jersey cubs fan]

Choosing the endpoints can let you make any argument you want, but since 2014 (not quite a decade) they haven’t lost 90 games and have more seasons over 90 wins than not.

The discussion was around sustained success. I made the point that better days are ahead, but it's seems like a very good chance they don't have the stomach to fund sustained success. They'll take their 4-5 year windows and bail. Pointing out they were good for 5 years before pulling the plug doesn't refute my point.