Hairyducked Idiot

I don't begrudge a team owner the right to make a profit, but I think that intelligent team owners understand that the vast majority of that profit is going to come in the resale value of the team. Slashing payroll to maintain that profit, or even to break even, is a losing game. Payroll isn't just an expense, it's an investment in the success that sustains both revenue and brand value. In 2009, the year between Ricketts' bid being accepted and his actually taking over (because nothing is ever easy with this franchise), the Cubs drew 3,168,859. This year, I think we're looking at something like 2,600,000 based on comparing last year's first seven home games to this year (and yes, the weather has been a bit of a factor too). At Wrigley Field ticket and concession prices, I think $70/person would be a conservative estimate, so that drop in attendance represents $43 million in directly lost revenue. That's even before we get into the fact that most of the attendance these days is phantom and not buying concessions. Or the loss in merchandise and TV ratings. And playoff games, though those aren't quite the cash cow you'd think when you start spreading the money to all the various places it goes. Or the loss of rooftop revenues. Maybe Ricketts thinks that this is very temporary, or maybe he thinks 2.6 million fans is in the vicinity of rock bottom so he has nothing more to lose, but with the Cubs' market and ticket prices, it's hard to believe that another $30m in payroll wouldn't be a winning investment, even if he had to borrow it. If Ricketts can't come up with money to run the team like the Tribune did or to pay for the renovations without cutting into payroll, then he's in over his head as an owner. Ricketts being in over his head is something I really don't think is all that bad of a hypothesis. His one largely lauded move has been hiring Theo Epstein, and while I know this is not a popular opinion, it looks to me like he got used as a soft landing spot for an executive who wanted out of Boston and out of the big-market pressure to win. Maybe Epstein really thought he could succeed on his own, major FA averse terms, but the game passes by executives as truly as it does players, and I've seen little evidence (though not none, there's been a few moves here and there that make me long for the consistent genius I thought we were getting) that he has the same touch he did in his first five years in Boston. The point of this post was to bash Ricketts more than Epstein, but like TT said, I can't help but think the utility of a big-market payroll is shrinking in the face of the TV boom and pre-FA extensions, so the winter of 2011 is looking more and more like an opportunity we not only blew but wont' be getting back. Other than that, Ricketts' top priority was renovating Wrigley Field, and he botched it from day one. It's going to end up taking three or four years longer than it should have from the beginning. He got completely bent over by the city and state, who simply spent the years telling him "no" at every turn while he tried to appeal to fairness, set impotent deadlines that went ignored, and win a PR battle that did him no good. And now it seems like we may have to cannibalize the baseball budget to pay for it, along with the revenues that it was supposed to be generating to help the team itself that will now go straight into the project. If Epstein's organization is as good at identifying and developing young players as we hope it is, then this will all be papered over in five years and all we'll have lost is some years (because we all have an infinite number of those?). But I can't help but be annoyed at how little has gone right in the last four years, some of it through poor luck but much of it through simple bad ownership decisions. A microcosm of the entirety of Cubs' history.

I can't absolve Epstein because of the offseason of 2011-12 and the statements Ricketts made at the time. For 2011 season, Ricketts describes Cubs' baseball budget as "around $200 million." The Cubs had $135 million payroll and dropped almost $20 million on amateur signings. He also said the Cubs did not lose money on that budget. Based on the few times we have seen financial documents from MLB teams, $45 million for everything else that would fall under "baseball ops" seems about right. In October of 2011, almost simultaneous to convincing Epstein to join the Cubs, Ricketts states that the baseball budget for 2012 is essentially the same. The new CBA restricts how much they can spend on ordinary IFAs and the draft. So combined MLB/amateur spending drops by several dozen million dollars. You can throw in the costs for the Dominican facility, the front office expansion, the software, but it's hard to come up with a reasonable estimate of all those costs that makes up for even half of the lowered spending on players. So the only conclusions would seem to support are: A) Ricketts was lying in October of 2011 when he said the baseball budget would be about the same. B) Sometime between when he hired Epstein and when free agent signings began, he pulled the rug out from under Epstein and slashed his budget. C) Epstein left money on the table and part of the payroll drop was due to his choice. Before the Epstein signing, Ricketts was adamant that he didn't believe in rebuilding years and that he expected the team to try to make a quick turnaround. When you combine that with Epstein's comments about his frustrations at being forced to try to win in Boston even when he wanted a gap year to help the farm system catch up and his waxing philosophical about homegrown players, I think C is the most plausible of those conclusions by a wide margin. Now, since then, I find it completely plausible that the lack of public financing for renovations and declining attendance have begun to put a squeeze on the baseball budget, so now that payroll level is what we're facing whether Epstein likes it or not. But for the 2011-12 offseason? It sure looks to me like it was Epstein who convinced Ricketts that we should pass on the big free agent opportunities and go with a slower rebuild. And it's going to be very hard to convince me at this point that the slower rebuild was optimal for the franchise. We spent too much time in 2011 absolutely convinced that the 2011-12 offseason was a unique chance to strike for the Cubs. We had payroll room cleared, we had a clear need for exactly what the FA class had to offer, we had the decline of some key division rivals, we had an emerging farm system that just needed a few bridge years at the MLB level before it would start producing consistently. It was a golden opportunity, and Epstein blew it. Now we probably are stuck with his lame, slow rebuild as the optimal solution.

It's not binary. They aren't just either "taking a hit" or "not taking a hit." Part of their job is to try to spin the public relations of it all to try to minimize the damage to their revenue streams and standing with the fan base. Trying to tie the recent drop in payroll to the Wrigley expansion is part of that effort of spin control. I don't think that's their plan. I don't think there's been one single "plan" that unifies everything that's happened since Ricketts took over. The exact situation that we've arrived at is due to some combination of Ricketts' actions, Epstein's actions and circumstances beyond either's control, and while we can speculate on how much of the blame/credit goes into each of those three categories, we don't have enough information to say definitively and everyone's going to have their interpretation. My best guess? (long) Is my interpretation the only one? Of course not. None of us has followed Ricketts around with cameras and a microphone 24/7/365 for the last four years. But I read every quote, I follow every move, and I think this fits in with what we know and what he's said.

Baez was apparently using a heavier bat today. It seems odd to me that he'd want to slow his bat down. He's having problems with committing too soon and pop-ups. His bat being "too" fast would presumably not cause those problems. Those are, weirdly enough, slow bat problems. But he homered and the BABIP luck started to turn for him today. I hope he has about eight more days just like it in the next two weeks. I'd like for him to learn to be more than a hacker, but being a great hacker would be preferable to a mediocre one. Came across this study today that emphasized why I just can't shake the nagging concerns with Baez, as amazing as his ceiling and attitude are. It's one of the more counterintuitive facts in basbeall: Strikeout rate says little about your ability to hit a certain level of pitching, but it is very predictive of your ability to carry your hitting ability up to high levels. http://www.minorleagueball.com/2011/4/22/2123847/the-significance-of-minor-league-k-rates The study looks at BA Top 100 hitting prospects from 1990 to 2007. Out of those 524 prospects, 57% went on to at least 1500 PAs in the major leagues. Strikeout rate seemed to have a very high correlation with failure to reach that threshold. K-rate Succes% <10% 90% <12% 79.0% <14% 72.7% <16.4% 68.2% >16.4% 48.6% >18% 43.4% >20% 32.3% >22% 23.3% >24% 22.7% Baez's minor league K rate is 22.8% going into tonight, and you can probably expect it to creep up as he faces more and more advanced pitching. I know the whiff concerns aren't anything new, but it's kind of interesting to see if codified like that.

I can't see us paying Garza and Price simultaneously. That'd have to be an either/or situation. So I think we'd be looking at Price/Samardzija/Jackson/Wood/Grappel. Which is still pretty drool-worthy. Vizcaino could conceivably push his way in, but I'm still thinking bullpen for him. It all hinges around how the Rays see Javier Baez. Unless they are crazy in love with him, I just can't see us putting together a competitive package for Price. Rizzo, Castro or Soler don't fit their "hyper-cheap" model. Almora isn't a centerpiece quality prospect in a Price trade. The only way I can see it happening from a Rays perspective is if they have an absolutely huge Baez boner. This isn't a franchise known for their reasonable trade demands. They're going to want an absurd overpayment from the outside perspective, more than likely, and they'll hold out until someone gives it to them. From the Cubs' perspective? It'd just feel weird. They've spent two offseasons eschewing all but one moderately expensive free agent in favor of building up a base of prospects. Why would they do a sudden 180 in order to pay a huge price in both prospects *and* a contract extension when they're now two years closer to actually seeing some results from that waiting? Like I said, it sure looks like Price/Garza would be an either/or to me with our payroll structure. We'll probably get an outfielder to replace DeJesus and/or Soriano next offseason. Do those moves in concert make this team much more than a .500 team for 2014? It's hard to figure out what the front office means and what they don't, but they've pretty consistent about talking about the "waves and waves of prospects" being the end-goal. With a realistic view of our farm system, that's 2015. So in order to find a Price trade plausible, I'd have to believe: 1) The Rays *really* like Javier Baez as the centerpiece of a Price trade. 2) The Cubs could then proceed to package Baez into a trade that would beat every other offer from the other two dozen teams that would love to have him. 3) The Cubs would find Price to be such a unique opportunity that they would completely reverse course on two years worth of work to push for a 2014 competitive team. And that they'd want to hand out a massive, long-term extension to a pitcher, which is always an icky feeling. I find all three of those to be fairly unlikely. All three taken together? I find it almost impossible to believe that'll happen.

The significant payroll drop came between 2011 and 2012, which means it predates the Cubs giving up on a public subsidy. The timeline doesn't add up at all for that explanation. It's just the Cubs' latest attempt to spin and deflect.

It sure looks to me like this is Epstein just doing his usual, masterful, vague misdirections to try to reset the standards by which he is judged. Based on what we know of the Cubs' finances and the Forbes report, there's not really any good reason they couldn't have a payroll high enough to compete right now. He makes it sound as if the lack of renovations are the reason payroll has dropped so much in recent years, without actually saying it. It's not lying, but it is spin control of the highest level. He's connecting two ideas that shouldn't have any real connection, in order to deflect attention away from the fact that either he or his boss made a decision to drop payroll that is directly effecting the rather pitiful win percentage we've seen over the last 13 months. Maybe it was the best thing for the franchise to lower payroll, become awful and let the larger contracts expire without replacement. I don't believe it was. But either way, it didn't happen because of the lack of renovations.

I didn't bring this up. But why the heck wouldn't you want to talk about it? Either way, it's probably the most important story in Cubs baseball of the decade.

In this case, I believe Paniagua doesn't have questions about his own information any longer. I think the holdup is more about his family right now. Maybe I'm reading waaaay too much between the lines here, but I took all that to mean that they can't confirm whether or not he's using a sibling's identity.

I can sort of believe that the 2013 payroll is being hamstrung by revenue issues. Ricketts could have realized sometime last year that he wasn't going to get any sort of subsidy and needed to look for alternatives. But it's hard to line up his statements plausibly to believe that the 2012 MLB payroll, and the decisions made in the 2011-12 offseason, were heavily restricted by revenue issues.

It has, but the great thing about the minor leagues is that there's always something. Candelario, Vogelbach, Watkins, Szczur have all caught my eye this season. Even liking the reports on Alberto Cabrera, though that may just be me looking for something from him.

OK, so under this theory, sometime between late Sept./early Oct. of 2011 and when free agency was happening that offseason, Ricketts gained new information about revenue projections that caused him to lower the baseball budget significantly. That seems plausible to you?

They changed it between Sept/Oct. of 2011 and Dec. 2011? Why?

Pretty solid on this correction - I believe you mean he was lower in the FSL. Nailed me dead to rights. Regression to the mean was always coming on that streak. :hello:

Last I checked on minorleaguecentral, he had a metric ton of infield pop-ups this year. I have no idea what sort of mechanical/whatever issues might cause that, or even if it's all that reliable given how minor league batted ball data is collected. I think most of us expected him to have this sort of struggle at some point going up the ladder. I was kind of hoping it'd be AA and not A+, though.

http://espn.go.com/blog/chicago/cubs/post/_/id/6706/ricketts-selling-points-to-epstein I simply find it very hard to square that interview, which was given at the end of the 2011 season and referred to 2012, with the implication that the decision to cut the MLB payroll to $109 million was due to a lowered baseball budget from low revenues and/or debt service and/or saving up for renovations. The two statements seem to be contradictory to me, unless you have an explanation that ties them together? Of course, I think that was the same interview in which Ricketts gave this quote:

Am too.

Correct, I do believe it's the first time he's actually had surgery. It'd be nice if that turns out to be the turning point.

The MLB standings paint them poorly. I'm just trying to find explanations that fit the facts.

This team has performed better than 4-9, to be sure. What sucks is that they had absolutely no margin for error, so between injuries and negative variance, we're pretty darn sunk.

I'm completely right, and in two years everyone's opinions will mirror what I'm saying now, though no one will acknowledge I was right all along.

I'd be more inclined to believe him if this were the first time he said his wrist was healthy. It's just a spring training platitude like "rededicated" or "best shape of his career." Valbuena's sucky enough that I won't pitch a fit if they bench him, but I'm not exactly holding my breath for a Stewart breakout. It would be nice, though.

I didn't say profits. I said revenue. But that aside, even if it were true, that'd be a terrible way to run a sports franchise. Slashing payroll and letting the team be terrible is shooting your own revenue in the foot. We're seeing it right now. Attendance is down every year that Ricketts has owned the team. We're looking at being down 500k-ish this year from 2009. That's a huge revenue drop that didn't need to happen. They aren't even lying, really. It's just spin. "Revenue isn't as high as we'd like, so payroll isn't as high as we'd like." That's probably literally true, but it doesn't mean they couldn't have rolled out $135 million last year and had a competitive team. And that would have been the smarter thing to do.

Luis Valbuena has a .350 OBP (granted, with no BA or SLG at all). I'm not exactly dying to move him out for Ian Stewart. I guess I won't throw a fit if they do if they continue to believe in Stewart's upside, but I'd prefer they left Valbuena in there.

MLB executives of team with 4th highest revenue in sport cry poor, davell takes them at their word. Details at 11. Last year at this time, we had quotes from these guys saying the baseball budget was unchanged. Now suddenly things are going bad, and it's the reason payroll is down? Not buying it.