NEWSLETTER
With the Chicago Cubs Convention going on, team owner and chairman Tom Ricketts hopped on 670 The Score today, and was also quoted extensively in a piece at The Athletic.
I wanted to spotlight some of the financial remarks, as those are the ones where Ricketts necessarily has an outsized role in the organization …
- This is the one that seems to be getting the most play:
Tom Ricketts on fans calling for Cubs to spend more:
"They think somehow we have all these dollars that the Dodgers have or the Mets have or the Yankees have and we just keep it. Which isn't true at all. What happens is we try to break even every year, and that's about it."— 670 The Score (@670TheScore) January 18, 2025
- It’s the kind of thing that is not inaccurate – the Cubs don’t have anything close to the revenue of the Dodgers or Yankees, and no MLB owner has anything close to the wealth of Steve Cohen – but is just never going to resonate with fans, especially in a stretch of no full-season playoff appearances in such a long time (and no playoff wins in seven years). He gets asked the questions and he has to answer, so I’m not even dumping on the guy for it. I’m just saying that framing spending around the MUCH bigger money spent by other large-market clubs is not anything most fans care to hear.
- Moreover, what Ricketts means by the “break even” thing is that the Cubs aren’t designed to generate “profits” for ownership – revenues minus expenses go into the baseball budget – but that, too, is going to ring hollow with folks for a couple reasons: (1) when you say “try to break even every year,” it connotes that you are affirmatively trying to manage money in a way that emphasizes the reduced spending part since that is entirely within the team’s control (as opposed to winning more games to generate more revenues …); and (2) teams and team-related assets have appreciated like crazy in major pro sports for decades now, so even if the team doesn’t turn an annual “profit,” it is absolutely generating significant additional wealth every year.
- Similarly, this comment includes a good point but is presented in a way that’s probably going to undercut it:
Tom Ricketts takes issue with the narrative surrounding the Cubs: "If we trade Cody Bellinger for a starting pitcher, that's a trade. If we trade Cody Bellinger to get the resources to sign a pitcher, that's a salary dump. It doesn't make any sense."— 670 The Score (@670TheScore) January 18, 2025
- If a guy with a big salary at a position of redundancy is moved out for little return, and that salary is replaced by a big salary at a position of need, Ricketts is absolutely right that it’s a little silly to be derisive about a deal as a “salary dump.” You might just be reallocating your resources in a way that improves the team at the same overall price.
- But in this particular case, you’re talking about a very popular player who was moved out in a deal that cleared well north of $20 million in salary, and those resources were used … where? To sign Colin Rea to a $5 million deal? I think fans are pretty justified – even if slightly irrational – to wonder where exactly those Cody Bellinger dollars are going. I don’t really understand the decision to frame the argument that way today. Maybe in a few weeks it’ll look a lot different, and the Cubs will have clearly improved the team with those would-have-been-redundant dollars. As we sit here today, however, the Cody Bellinger trade absolutely threatens to look more like a “salary dump” than a mere reallocation of resources.
- Then again, I do want to note something Ricketts told The Athletic:
“Chicago Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts anticipates the club’s major-league payroll will end up around the $241 million luxury-tax threshold this year, though that depends on how the rest of the free-agent market shakes out, what happens at the trade deadline and if the team seriously competes for a playoff spot.”
- If it does play out that way, then the Bellinger dollars clearly would have been reallocated along the way, and I don’t think folks should have a beef with that.
- Among Ricketts’ other financially-adjacent comments in The Athletic piece, which is worth a read: neither the impending CBA negotiations/changes, nor the influx of minority private equity ownership stakes, have or will fundamentally change the Cubs’ spending plans. (I wrote extensively about these issues last month.) I’m not sure Ricketts could have responded to those issues, which were first raised by ESPN, any other way. I’ll stand on what I wrote on the topic and leave it there for today.
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