Article: Is Tom Ricketts Lying, or Are Cubs About to Spend Big?

[Matthew Trueblood]

This week, as the Chicago Cubs began full-squad spring training work, owner Tom Ricketts met the media and made some controversial remarks about the team's payroll. Let's take a closer look.

Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

In a brief scrum with reporters (an annual rite of spring for most of the league's owners), Tom Ricketts talked about why he's not closely involved in the Cubs' pursuit of Cody Bellinger, and about what he told the team heading into spring training. The money quote (pun intended), though, was this, as reported by Jesse Rogers of ESPN.

"We're right there at CBT levels," Ricketts said. "It's kind of our natural place for us. That should be enough to win our division and be consistent every year."

Those remarks stirred some predictable consternation, for a variety of reasons. Some fans balked at the idea that the Cubs' annual goal should be winning the NL Central, rather than fighting for World Series titles. It's worth a separate piece, so I won't belabor it here, but that argument doesn't land with me. Winning the division and winning World Series aren't contradictory goals. They're in harmony with one another. I don't think focusing on winning divisions is a less noble or less aggressive strategy than focusing on chasing a single ring, as the team did in 2016. 

Other fans, though, were outraged at the notion that Ricketts feels the Cubs should be stopping at the first luxury tax threshold, even if that was more implied than stated outright. That's a perfectly fair reaction. The Cubs are a massively profitable, big-market team, and the Ricketts family sounds both greedy and ghoulish when they try to use their annual spending on maintaining Wrigley Field or their tax payments to deflect demands that they reinvest in the team on the field. The Cubs should spend more than $250 million on payroll in most seasons, under current rules. To suggest otherwise is to further line the Ricketts's pockets at the expense of, frankly, everyone with any last name other than Ricketts.

Here's what jumped out to me, though: What Ricketts said is wildly, demonstrably, crucially untrue. Right now, the Cubs' CBT number is just over $205 million, according to Cot's Contracts, the best source on the internet for this kind of information. That's actually about $13 million more than their actual projected payments for the year, because of the way CBT numbers are calculated using the annual average value of all contracts, but it's more than $30 million below the lowest CBT threshold for 2024, which is $237 million.

By no plausible modern MLB standard is $205 million "right there at" $237 million. There's a yawning gap there. That means one of two things:

1. Ricketts was lying, in a rather bald-faced and easily falsified way. He was saying something about the team's spending that no one would consider substantially true, knowing it could be easily looked up and rejected as false.
2. In Ricketts's mind, another $30 million or so is there to be spent.

I don't want to rule out Option 1, even if the way I presented it above makes it sound like a strategy so deeply stupid and self-defeating that no billionaire would be silly enough to execute it. Ricketts is, by the standard of billionaires or of anyone else, pretty stupid, self-defeating, and silly. If he weren't, the Cubs wouldn't be on a six-year streak of failing to even reach a Division Series.

That said, I think Option 2 is the reality. That doesn't mean the Cubs will necessarily spend the $30 million left in Jed Hoyer's budget. Hoyer is, as we've discussed before, insufficiently aggressive in free agency. Ricketts is, as he made plain in his interview this week by saying he refuses to communicate with Scott Boras, insensible of the risks he runs by being so laissez-faire with his front office and failing to engage with top talents.

It's possible, therefore, that the Cubs will whiff on Bellinger, and not even collect any of the other Four Borasmen as a consolation. I think it's vanishingly unlikely, though. If Ricketts has given Hoyer a budget that allows him to spend right up to even the first CBT threshold, then Hoyer is most probably waiting out Boras and trying to keep other options open, rather than actually considering leaving that money unspent. I would be shocked, given these statements, if the Cubs haven't added at least one--and quite possibly two--high-end players by the time the season begins late next month.

If I'm wrong, then either Hoyer has made his most disastrous error yet, or Ricketts was lying through his teeth into the microphones shoved into his face this week. Both of those things are, alas, possible, but the probability of either remains remote.

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[Guest234]

It's Poppa Joe's money - he made it, he will influence how it spent. 

 

[jersey cubs fan]

If a Ricketts may be lying, you know those entitled pieces of horsefeathers are lying 

[Stratos]

Seems clear they're going to spend another 25m unless Boras makes that too hard to bother and other options don't present themselves.  They usually leave around 5-8m under the cap, so around 23-25m more to spend seems right.  By how everyone like Carter/Jed/Ricketts have been talking and not denying it anymore I think everyone knows at this point that they're targeting Bellinger.  I'm sure other Boras guys aren't off the table if that doesn't happen.

If Bellinger isn't getting his number then it's a matter of who will bend, Jed or Boras.  Both are extremely disciplined negotiators  so who knows.

[We Got The Whole 9]

10 hours ago, Stratos said:

Seems clear they're going to spend another 25m unless Boras makes that too hard to bother and other options don't present themselves.  They usually leave around 5-8m under the cap, so around 23-25m more to spend seems right.  By how everyone like Carter/Jed/Ricketts have been talking and not denying it anymore I think everyone knows at this point that they're targeting Bellinger.  I'm sure other Boras guys aren't off the table if that doesn't happen.

If Bellinger isn't getting his number then it's a matter of who will bend, Jed or Boras.  Both are extremely disciplined negotiators  so who knows.

Not really. 

[CubinNY]

11 hours ago, Guest234 said:

It's Poppa Joe's money - he made it, he will influence how it spent. 

 

Could anyone imagine your father buying a baseball franchise for you and your siblings to play with? 

[Rex Buckingham]

[SOFNR]

He's too lazy too bother with good PR. I'm not sure he knows anything other then Jed was instructed not to cross that line.