The Chicago Cubs could have some inner angst brewing, but none of it would be on the field.
The Cubs– the team– seem fine. They will do their best with the talent they have, working under the leadership of manager Craig Counsell.
The inner turmoil appears to be between ownership and the front office tasked with putting together a winning, playoff-bound team for the first time since the abbreviated 2020 season.
Reading Between The Lines
The tension is not very hard to see, if you can read between the increasingly wide-open lines.
“We took it as a real challenge,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer told media on Tuesday, referring to this year’s multi-move offseason. “We knew we had certain constraints. How do we work within those constraints and continue to get better at the same time? Only time will tell if we were successful. But I feel good about what we accomplished this offseason, given that we had some constraints.”
Constraints.
This will be as close as a sitting executive will get to flat-out pointing a finger at the owner’s frugality in providing the budget needed to succeed.
Hoyer, whose contract is up at the end of this season, may be at that point, as an OUTGOING executive, where he might be tempted to start pointing some fingers, even if the point is an indirect one.
Chicago Cubs Frugality Steals Headlines
The biggest story in the Cubs universe since losing out on free agent third baseman Alex Bregman last weekend in frustrating fashion has been the Cubs ownership. Specifically, it’s been their apparent unwillingness to spend money like the big market team that they are.
Buster Olney of ESPN offered an especially brutal takedown of the Cubs-owning Ricketts family.
Olney’s article begins with the funny/not-so-funny comparison between the Cubs and a smaller market team that, literally, just had their stadium blown away:
“Hurricane Milton wrecked the Tampa Bay Rays’ ballpark last fall, leaving them without a stadium. For this season, they will play their home games in the Yankees’ spring training facility, which has a capacity in the range of 11,000 fans.
And yet the Rays have outspent the Chicago Cubs in free agency this winter.
Which says so much more about the conduct of the big-market Cubs than about the Rays. Last week, the Cubs were outbid by multiple teams for the services of All-Star third baseman Alex Bregman, and the question that should hang over the franchise is: why? Why aren’t the Cubs spending more?”
That last question from Olney had to be a rhetorical one since the answer is pretty obvious– The Ricketts don’t want to spend.
The Cubs: A Revenue Juggernaut With Mid-Market Spending
The ESPN article, using Sportico.com as a source, points out that the Cubs generated the fourth most revenue in all of baseball ($502 million) in 2024, behind only the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox. Their value as a franchise ($5.31 billion) makes them the fourth most valuable team, again behind the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox.
Yet, they’re set to be near the middle of the pack when it comes to player payroll. The raw numbers make Tom Ricketts’ recent lament about the team working to “break even” every year especially vexing.
That disconnect between revenue and investment has to be frustrating for those working to build upon a proven money-making franchise with a beyond-loyal fan base.
This latest “constraints” quote issued by Hoyer hasn’t been the first time the veteran exec has hinted at budget restraints limiting his ability to acquire talent. It was, however, the most direct(ish) jab at ownership for failing to open up the pocketbook a bit wider.
Does all this mean that Hoyer may be out the door after this season? It certainly looks that way right now.
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