Article: The Jed Hoyer Cubs Will Never Sign a Superstar. Will the Tom Ricketts Cubs Ever Do So?

[Matthew Trueblood]

It made sense that the Cubs couldn't (or wouldn't) keep pace with the Dodgers, Giants, and Blue Jays in the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes. That's in keeping with the way Jed Hoyer has done business ever since taking over. The question is: Even in some future in which the Cubs have a more aggressive top baseball executive, will ownership let them cook?

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

It's a dispositional thing, with Jed Hoyer. He spent almost a decade as Theo Epstein's top lieutenant and an occasional public mouthpiece, and he's been the man in charge for the Cubs since late 2020, and it's time to stop thinking he's been hiding the ball that whole time. Hoyer doesn't have the iron stomach needed to win bidding wars at the top end of the free-agent market. Heck, he doesn't even have an interest in trying it.

By Hoyer's reckoning, superstars don't win championships. He prefers the steady, serious, tireless work of building a great organization from top to bottom, with depth on the roster and excellent processes throughout baseball operations. It's an axiom for him. Even though he can recognize the need for high-end talent and will pursue it when the opportunity comes, he insists upon it being on terms friendly to his paradigm.

No one who thinks that way is ever going to end up with a Shohei Ohtani-caliber player again, except by the extraordinary and unforeseeable good luck of developing such a player. If we didn't understand that clearly enough when the Cubs bowed out of the negotiations for Ohtani himself, Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic underscored it on MLB Network by reporting that the Cubs have largely fallen out of the mix for Yoshinobu Yamamoto, too.

"I think both sides would love a reunion."@sahadevsharma speaks on the likelihood Cody Bellinger re-signs with the Cubs and which areas the organization will look to address this offseason. pic.twitter.com/KxciJtt2QA

— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) December 13, 2023

Ohtani's contract was one thing. Whatever number you prefer to assign to it, its practical impact exceeds half a billion dollars, and although Ohtani has been one of the greatest players in baseball history for the last three years, there's risk the size of Lake Michigan in throwing that much money at him just as he begins the process of rehabbing from what amounts to a second Tommy John surgery on his elbow. He's also almost 30 years old, so even though he didn't elect a contract as long as those signed by Trea Turner and Xander Bogaerts last winter, he'll be nearly 40 when the deal wraps up.

None of that is true of Yamamoto. He's not a unicorn, and he's racked up heavier workloads than any MLB team would allow a pitcher to incur by the age of 25, but then again, he's only 25. He's one of the world's most accomplished starting pitchers, and signing him will come at a purely financial cost--no draft picks will be taken away. nor international free-agent spending ability curtailed, for whichever team signs him. If the Cubs won't venture past $300 million for him, for whom will they do so?

The answer should be obvious by now: it's no one. That's just not going to happen under Hoyer's leadership. Maybe that's ok. Epstein and Hoyer's second half-decade at the helm of the organization saw too much slippage in the good foundations they had laid during the first few years. They were betrayed and undermined by ownership, but they also failed. They were supposed to come to Chicago and turn an inconsistent franchise into a perennial contender, for the first time since before World War II. They didn't do it. Hoyer is trying to get that heavy lift right this time, and perhaps that's laudable.

It's possible to win without high-priced superstars. It might even be the wiser course in many cases, and especially so for the Cubs. They face the same stiff penalties other big-market teams do when they exceed the luxury tax thresholds, and they don't receive any of the little benefits that help small-market teams compete, but unlike every other big-market team in baseball (unless you count the White Sox as one), the Cubs are competing exclusively against small-market teams. They would take on a lot of risk by building around superstars, given the head start on sustainability the current rules give to the Reds, Brewers, Pirates, and even Cardinals.

Still, Cubs fans are within their rights to be frustrated by this way of doing things. Hoyer hasn't yet proved good enough at his more conservative way of building a team to be one of those teams who wins without stars, and it's not fun to root for a team who has such an overabundance of resources--many of them extracted directly from fans, via high prices on absolutely everything--and harbors them so jealously, when they don't even offer the solace of consistent playoff appearances.

The essential question is this: Is Hoyer's conservatism the only thing stopping the team from playing for Yamamoto-like boondoggles? If so, then fans can console themselves with the knowledge that they'll soon see either a turn in the team's fortunes or a change of its course. If it's just that Hoyer doesn't like putting too many eggs in one basket, then (if the team doesn't win something big, and soon) he'll be replaced by an executive who's more disposed to do so. Eventually, if it's just Hoyer between the Cubs and a Yamamoto, an Ohtani, or a Juan Soto, then either his plan will work, or it won't, and the next person will land the team's first true megadeal.

Alas, that's just one possibility, and the other is more pernicious. Hoyer probably isn't even asking Tom Ricketts for the right to truly swing with the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Phillies, and Padres on contracts like the ones the highest-profile free agents have signed over the last few winters. The nightmare scenario is one in which the Cubs can't get over the hump (without star power) in 2024 or 2025, Hoyer is dismissed, and a new executive tries to bring in the kind of generational player Hoyer neglected--only to be told that the owner was never going to permit that kind of major move, anyway.

The biggest drawback to Hoyer's conservatism is that it prevents us from updating our information on Ricketts's willingness to do what it takes to win. If the team keeps making good progress in its scouting and player development, maybe it will never matter that much. If the team turns Pete Crow-Armstrong and Cade Horton into the next Corbin Carroll and Gerrit Cole, they won't need to shell out $300 million to keep them. They'll have a chance to get aggressive and sign them long-term for half that much, or less. If not, though, we need to know whether Ricketts is even open to paying the irrational price the market sets on elite talent. We can't get that answer while Hoyer stands in the way.

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[imb]

you can basically boil this down to a spreadsheet. They know how much investment yields however much return. This isn't about winning, they did that once. Now they want to sit back and make money. They're never going to spend $300m on a player because they can make a profit without doing it. That's the end of the story. The entire plan is to stay middle of the pack so the fans don't completely disappear, tease them with moderate improvements, and then hope they get lucky with prospects again and can win without spending. It's just how it is.

[CubinNY]

17 minutes ago, imb said:

you can basically boil this down to a spreadsheet. They know how much investment yields however much return. This isn't about winning, they did that once. Now they want to sit back and make money. They're never going to spend $300m on a player because they can make a profit without doing it. That's the end of the story. The entire plan is to stay middle of the pack so the fans don't completely disappear, tease them with moderate improvements, and then hope they get lucky with prospects again and can win without spending. It's just how it is.

exactly

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I don't love the word 'never' for things like this.  Could we swap some names and not write a similar story about Andrew Friedman circa 2019?  He had been in charge in LA for 5 years by the time he signed such a deal, and it had to be an extension of a recently acquired player rather than winning a bidding war.  Mindsets evolve, circumstances change.  Sometimes they don't, but I'm not convinced this offseason is closing the book on Hoyer being aggressive at the top of the market.

 

I also don't really get the 'and now we don't know how much the Ricketts will actually allow' sentiment, I think this requires focusing much harder on vibes than actual facts on the ground . They've paid the luxury tax before, they've signed top of market FA before, they've signed 6, 7, and 8 year deals before.  Everything they've ever said about payroll is it's there if the front office thinks it's the right decision.  Maybe there's an unknown if they would've signed up to pay Ohtani 68 million until the heat death of the universe, but this suspicion seems to be overwhelmingly driven by (well-deserved) animus towards the Ricketts for their activities outside the Cubs, or an overreaction to the 2020 offseason which is a set of once in a lifetime circumstances.

[CubinNY]

Maybe if they get another Andre Dawson. 

[champaignchris]

7 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

I don't love the word 'never' for things like this.  Could we swap some names and not write a similar story about Andrew Friedman circa 2019?  He had been in charge in LA for 5 years by the time he signed such a deal, and it had to be an extension of a recently acquired player rather than winning a bidding war.  Mindsets evolve, circumstances change.  Sometimes they don't, but I'm not convinced this offseason is closing the book on Hoyer being aggressive at the top of the market.

 

I also don't really get the 'and now we don't know how much the Ricketts will actually allow' sentiment, I think this requires focusing much harder on vibes than actual facts on the ground . They've paid the luxury tax before, they've signed top of market FA before, they've signed 6, 7, and 8 year deals before.  Everything they've ever said about payroll is it's there if the front office thinks it's the right decision.  Maybe there's an unknown if they would've signed up to pay Ohtani 68 million until the heat death of the universe, but this suspicion seems to be overwhelmingly driven by (well-deserved) animus towards the Ricketts for their activities outside the Cubs, or an overreaction to the 2020 offseason which is a set of once in a lifetime circumstances.

I would add to this that getting into a bidding war for their new manager doesn’t make much sense if we blame the Ricketts for the penny pinching. 
 

I know manager salary is a drop in the bucket compared to player salary, but if it were an ownership directive to scrimp and save rather than Hoyer’s roster building philosophy, paying $8 million a year for a manager when you could be paying $3 million a year for a different, perfectly credible manager doesn’t make sense. 
 

it doesn’t make any difference to ownership if you go $5million over market for a manager or a relief pitcher. Money is money.  So the reason management is willing to reset the market at the field manager position but not for players probably isn’t due to ownership preference. 

[gflore34]

6 minutes ago, champaignchris said:

I would add to this that getting into a bidding war for their new manager doesn’t make much sense if we blame the Ricketts for the penny pinching. 
 

I know manager salary is a drop in the bucket compared to player salary, but if it were an ownership directive to scrimp and save rather than Hoyer’s roster building philosophy, paying $8 million a year for a manager when you could be paying $3 million a year for a different, perfectly credible manager doesn’t make sense. 
 

it doesn’t make any difference to ownership if you go $5million over market for a manager or a relief pitcher. Money is money.  So the reason management is willing to reset the market at the field manager position but not for players probably isn’t due to ownership preference. 

It's the most puzzling piece, what GM is going to showcase a manager as his big off season move?  Does Hoyer really think people are going to pay ridiculous amounts of money to watch a manager?

[Bertz]

Even for folks that hate Jed, isn't his villain origin story Tom horsefeathering him and Theo back in 2019?  I don't think any sort of "Jed's leaving money on the table that those benevolent Ricketsses are providing" passes the smell test at all.

I do think we have to adjust our expectations downward on how many bidding wars Jed is going to win.  Though like TT says I don't know that I'd say never.  If Rafael Devers had hit FA or if Corey Seager had hit FA when the team was already in position to be a contender I think we might have seen Jed let his hair down.  We know he was in on Ohtani beyond the Rangers and Red Sox, so obviously there are situations where he'll throw $400M plus at someone.

[champaignchris]

4 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Even for folks that hate Jed, isn't his villain origin story Tom horsefeathering him and Theo back in 2019?  I don't think any sort of "Jed's leaving money on the table that those benevolent Ricketsses are providing" passes the smell test at all.

I do think we have to adjust our expectations downward on how many bidding wars Jed is going to win.  Though like TT says I don't know that I'd say never.  If Rafael Devers had hit FA or if Corey Seager had hit FA when the team was already in position to be a contender I think we might have seen Jed let his hair down.  We know he was in on Ohtani beyond the Rangers and Red Sox, so obviously there are situations where he'll throw $400M plus at someone.

It’s not that he’s leaving money on the table. It’s how he’s spending the budget he gets, spreading it out among lesser talent instead of concentrating it on top-tier talent. A guy who gave multi-year contracts to Smyly, Barnhart and Mancini last year isn’t exactly being frugal.  

[imb]

48 minutes ago, champaignchris said:

I would add to this that getting into a bidding war for their new manager doesn’t make much sense if we blame the Ricketts for the penny pinching. 
 

I know manager salary is a drop in the bucket compared to player salary, but if it were an ownership directive to scrimp and save rather than Hoyer’s roster building philosophy, paying $8 million a year for a manager when you could be paying $3 million a year for a different, perfectly credible manager doesn’t make sense. 
 

it doesn’t make any difference to ownership if you go $5million over market for a manager or a relief pitcher. Money is money.  So the reason management is willing to reset the market at the field manager position but not for players probably isn’t due to ownership preference. 

i mean on day one we said, this means one of two things - either they're going to spend and they want a good manager to guide a championship caliber team, or they're looking for cheap wins to maintain the status quo. One of those two seems more likely right now and it's not the first one. 

[imb]

1 hour ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

I don't love the word 'never' for things like this.  Could we swap some names and not write a similar story about Andrew Friedman circa 2019?  He had been in charge in LA for 5 years by the time he signed such a deal, and it had to be an extension of a recently acquired player rather than winning a bidding war.  Mindsets evolve, circumstances change.  Sometimes they don't, but I'm not convinced this offseason is closing the book on Hoyer being aggressive at the top of the market.

 

I also don't really get the 'and now we don't know how much the Ricketts will actually allow' sentiment, I think this requires focusing much harder on vibes than actual facts on the ground . They've paid the luxury tax before, they've signed top of market FA before, they've signed 6, 7, and 8 year deals before.  Everything they've ever said about payroll is it's there if the front office thinks it's the right decision.  Maybe there's an unknown if they would've signed up to pay Ohtani 68 million until the heat death of the universe, but this suspicion seems to be overwhelmingly driven by (well-deserved) animus towards the Ricketts for their activities outside the Cubs, or an overreaction to the 2020 offseason which is a set of once in a lifetime circumstances.

the dodgers won 90 games 5 times between 2013 and 2019 and more than 100 games once during that span. They weren't dipping into the top bin of free agency because they didn't need to, something you can't say about any iteration of the cubs since theo left. 

the rest is just nonsense

[Sammy Sofa]

They spent "big" money on a manager who has been known for getting success from a small market team typically on a meh budget. Hmmmm, I wonder why Hoyer and #PTR could POSSIBLY want a guy like that...

[SouthSideRyan]

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

Even for folks that hate Jed, isn't his villain origin story Tom horsefeathering him and Theo back in 2019?  I don't think any sort of "Jed's leaving money on the table that those benevolent Ricketsses are providing" passes the smell test at all.

I do think we have to adjust our expectations downward on how many bidding wars Jed is going to win.  Though like TT says I don't know that I'd say never.  If Rafael Devers had hit FA or if Corey Seager had hit FA when the team was already in position to be a contender I think we might have seen Jed let his hair down.  We know he was in on Ohtani beyond the Rangers and Red Sox, so obviously there are situations where he'll throw $400M plus at someone.

I have no idea how anybody has ever not pissed themselves laughing at the Ricketts comment that the money is always there it's just the GM who doesn't want to spend it

[CubinNY]

I am so here for the pitchforks. 
 

They are  the 4th richest franchise that the Ricketts have made a 500% profit on while buying a majority of the real estate around the gold mine to soak their fans. Did I mention the sports book? They made enough in concert profit to pay for Ohtani. 
 

I mean, come the horsefeathers on. At some point everybody has to acknowledge the obvious. 

Edited December 14, 2023 by CubinNY

[Stratos]

5 hours ago, SouthSideRyan said:

I have no idea how anybody has ever not pissed themselves laughing at the Ricketts comment that the money is always there it's just the GM who doesn't want to spend it

Don't worry, it's being rolled over every year and we'll have a 500 million payroll next offseason.

[Stratos]

Corporate baseball is the best baseball.  Or maybe the better product is played on high school diamonds.

When I was in the 8th grade, my friends and I loved playing baseball at lunch on the crummy school diamond.  Some of the high school seniors had spare periods at the same time so every day over our lunch we played against them.  We played hard, both sides were super competitive, which is funny since we were so much younger and smaller than them.

During COVID I went back to the old that old diamond, and almost the entire once-gravel infield was grown over in grass because clearly hardly anyone had played on it since we graduated.  Some of the best memories of my entire life were on that diamond with my friends.  We played there from the 8th grade through the 12th grade, pretty much every day over our lunch hour and often after school.

[Layoutman]

I can empathize with you Stratos. These days are so very sad. Glad I grew up in an era where there were no cell phones, no high speed internet and the neighborhood was safe enough for kids to play.  Some of my fondest memories growing up are playing neighborhood baseball / whiffle ball games. 
 

Edited December 14, 2023 by 84 Cubs
Removed a mini rant

[Fanneeds]

The big move for the Cubs this year is gonna be signing a few minor leaguers that will never make it to the bigs. Very disappointing, we get promised the world and get 0

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 minute ago, Fanneeds said:

The big move for the Cubs this year is gonna be signing a few minor leaguers that will never make it to the bigs. Very disappointing, we get promised the world and get 0

Welcome to NSBB!

[Guest234]

What does Poppa Joe think, he's the one who earned the fortune - seems to me he gives not a fig for sports ownership.

The Cubs appear to be inclined on squatting.

[Sammy Sofa]

28 minutes ago, Guest234 said:

What does Poppa Joe think, he's the one who earned the fortune - seems to me he gives not a fig for sports ownership.

He's big on annihilating the environment so he can keep selling his bison burgers at Wrigley (do they still sell those bison burgers at Wrigley?):

The billionaire blocking off Montana’s wildlife: ‘Like fencing people out of Walmart’ | US news | The Guardian

Edited December 14, 2023 by Sammy Sofa

[Guest234]

You are correct - I am not a Cub fan because of current ownership.