Why in the world would the commissioner's office care what the Cubs are spending? Is this a serious question? The commish works for the owners. The owners, as a group, want to profit. Individually, the owners don't want anybody else spending money, because that drives up costs, and cuts into profit. Realistically, that's not going to happen. So, instead, they prefer to see teams spend logically, and not throw out crazy contracts that drives up the costs for everybody. In other words, they don't want to see guys handing out 3 year contracts with no-trade clauses to middle relievers, or 8 year 136 million deals for guys that aren't top of the line superstars. Owners got pissed at Hicks for the original ARod deal. Owners get pissed at Steinbrenner when he brings his payroll from $95m to $200m in just a couple of years. Owners get pissed when desperate GMs give insanely large contracts to mediocre pitchers, because that drives up costs for the rest of the pitchers. Selig doesn't want to see teams throw money around willy-nilly like Hendry did this offseason. It drives up the costs for everybody else and makes his life difficult, by having to deal with other owners bitching and moaning. I think it was a serious question, but you chose to remove the context and answer the question you wanted to answer. off season spending is one thing (although George was never publicly chastised by Bud for the spike in payroll you describe), so your points regarding that are well taken. but I think the question posed is directly related to the issue at hand. why Bud would be concerned, if he was concerned, about this particular deal is a head scratcher as the rule regarding sign off on transactions involving exchange of $1M or more is so low payroll teams can't sell players for large amounts of cash the way the KC A's used to sell all their good players to the Yankees. that is not the scenerio here. Jones contract is signed. why Bud would give a damn that the Cubs are paying him to play for the Marlins is beyond me. he had no problem with Colorado and Florida paying Hampton to pitch for the Braves, nor does he have a problem with the Rangers paying Arod to play for the Yankees.