$280,000

[Transmogrified Tiger]

"Ricketts vaguely alluded to CBT penalties being bad, so I need to see them do it in consecutive seasons before I believe it"

[The team behaves like they do not care about being above the tax in consecutive seasons]

"well that's a stupid mistake"

[Bertz]

5 hours ago, thawv said:

I'm taking Tom at his word with this one.  He said,  "We like to operate under the CBT threshold."  

"The penalties on CBT grow over time, so you want to be careful when you do it."

 

"You don't want to have too many long-term contracts when you have a lot of young guys that are coming up through the minors."

Until I see them pay in consecutive seasons, I'm going to assume the status quo.  Believe me, I hope I'm very wrong. 

It's clear this conversation is not going anywhere, so I'll just distill my thoughts into one last post:

- It is clear via both the team's actions and words (such as your quotes) that our standard assumption for payroll in any given year should be a little below the CBT line

- The costs of exceeding the CBT, even the repeater penalties, are fairly piddling unless you do so by 10's of millions of dollars.  Particularly for a GM like Jed who tries very hard to avoid QO free agents regardless

- It was clear immediately after the Bellinger signing that the team was right on the edge of the CBT.  The team made very little effort to dip back under from there, despite opportunity to do so

My point is less "the team will exceed the Luxury Tax this year" but instead because of those three points above my POV is "the team's plans are largely unchanged from what they would have been if they had narrowly avoided thr Luxury Tax."

[thawv]

Just now, Bertz said:

It's clear this conversation is not going anywhere, so I'll just distill my thoughts into one last post:

- It is clear via both the team's actions and words (such as your quotes) that our standard assumption for payroll in any given year should be a little below the CBT line

- The costs of exceeding the CBT, even the repeater penalties, are fairly piddling unless you do so by 10's of millions of dollars.  Particularly for a GM like Jed who tries very hard to avoid QO free agents regardless

- It was clear immediately after the Bellinger signing that the team was right on the edge of the CBT.  The team made very little effort to dip back under from there, despite opportunity to do so

My point is less "the team will exceed the Luxury Tax this year" but instead because of those three points above my POV is "the team's plans are largely unchanged from what they would have been if they had narrowly avoided thr Luxury Tax."

I agree with all but one thing.  The made one last ditch offer to get under by putting Smyly on waivers.  Nobody bit, so they are on the hook for his salary.  

Unless they can get to the WS in 2025, I don't see them going over.

[Dfan25]

It doesnt matter because the Cubs will go over again next year 🤣