I guess we can imagine that David Bote's 5/15 or Simmons' 1/4 contract totally bloated the payroll, but mostly they seem to lean on no one really expecting the Cubs to be competitive all the time and writing every excuse for them No one expects them to be good, so they end up filling the roster with castoffs from other teams and with a bunch of IOWA shuttle, 26th player on the roster, AAAA players, broken down projects, etc. because they know that the fans will still come out and support them.