Don’t forget what the long game is; a new TV deal 2020 and the completion of the Wrigley renovations. Both put the team in a fantastic financial situation. Due to this I always believed in a lot of spending on the team for the 2017 – 2019 seasons to boost the value of the tv contract. Before the last few months of 2014, we were looking at above .500 in 2016 and true contention in 2017 (my opinion). But Epstein screwed the plan up in 2015. It will be interesting to see how much money they will free up for 2016 to be real contenders. It would seem that they are now going to have to accelerate their spending. I have no idea of what their cash position is right now. The selling of shares was solely to finance the 500+ million Wrigley renovations that they couldn’t easily fund without pain. I don’t believe they would sell shares to fund the payroll for a year or two.