Jeff Passan ‏@JeffPassan 10m
When Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer arrived, they could not have envisioned this. The blame on the Cubs' woes goes solely and directly to owner.

Jeff Passan ‏@JeffPassan 11m
The Chicago Cubs are a mess, and it starts with miserly owners carrying the fifth-lowest payroll in baseball ($78M): http://yhoo.it/1lZ4Wxc


2013 record: 66-96
Finish: Fifth place, NL Central
2013 final payroll: $100.8 million(15th of 30)
Estimated 2014 opening day payroll: $78 million (26th of 30)
Yahoo! Sports offseason rank: 29th
Cubs in six words: Spare change? Ownership real bleacher bums.

OFFSEASON ACTION

Seven years ago, when the Chicago Cubs were the Chicago Cubs, which is to say a team that acted like it played in the country's third-biggest city and its most historic ballpark instead of slumming it like some small-market charity case burdened by the vagaries of its own miserably leveraged purchase, they did something that seems so novel today: acted like they wanted to get better.

In one offseason, the Cubs committed nearly $300 million to 10 free agents. Alfonso Soriano was a $136 million bust. Aramis Ramirez played about to his $75 million deal. Ted Lilly proved well worth a $40 million investment. Inefficient though it may be, free agency allowed the Cubs to flex financially, and next to the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, they might've had the biggest guns in the gym.


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New Cubs manager Rick Renteria, center, receives a jersey from Theo Epstein, right, and general manager Jed Hoyer. …
Today the Cubs are the 97-pound weakling. They are enfeebled by owners whose purchase of the team more than five years ago brought far more chaos than some sort of a renaissance. Not even president Theo Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer, two of the game's great architects, could have fathomed the budgetary restrictions. This is not handcuffs. It's a straitjacket.
Part of the issue, certainly, is the point at which the rebuilding process stands, with many of the Cubs' top prospects a year or so from debuting. Accordingly, overspending this season, one in which the Cubs' starting lineup resembles either a really good Triple-A team or a really bad major league team, may not be the most prudent move. Still, the Cubs' offseason maneuvers thus far look like this:

Nov. 26, 2013: Acquire backup catcher George Kottaras for cash

Dec. 12, 2013: Acquire center fielder Justin Ruggiano for outfielder Brian Bogusevic

Dec. 16, 2013: Sign left-handed reliever Wesley Wright to one-year, $1.425 million deal

Dec. 27, 2013: Sign closer Jose Veras to one-year, $4 million deal

And a bunch of minor league deals. Like, 14 of them. Because they're saving up an extra $5,000 for St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud? Perhaps they want the foie gras sausage at Hot Doug's. Or maybe there's no good answer at all and just an outbreak of dyspepsia from fans swallowing all of the garbage excuses being fed their way.

Should the Cubs win the Masahiro Tanaka sweepstakes, they will buy at least some good will in the short-term, even if he would be lipstick on a pig oinking ever louder by the day.

REALITY CHECK

Apparently all it takes to own one of the most storied franchises in sports history is the rich person's equivalent to a down payment on a house. When the Ricketts family bought the Cubs, Wrigley Field and an interest in the local sports network for $845 million, it put down $171 million – a hair over 20 percent – and financed the rest through a number of means. And in the half-decade since, that $674 million-plus in debt has left the Cubs in perpetual duress, acting as if they're Kansas City or Tampa Bay.


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Pitcher Masahiro Tanaka has been a hot topic this offseason. (AP)
The Rays, actually, are one of only four teams with lower projected opening-day payrolls than the Cubs' $78 million. It would represent the Cubs' most skinflint ballclub since 2002, when the sport's revenues were half of what they are today. Should they win the Tanaka bidding at $15 million a year, they'd still be spending less than Cincinnati and Kansas City, neither of which anyone would consider a peer, much less a distant relative, to Chicago.
Oh, and it's worth noting the Cubs are believed to be the most profitable team in the game, too. So there is that.

All of this dovetails rather nicely with the inherited woes of Cubs fandom. It's one thing to be bad. It's another to not spend money. The marriage of the two has led to poor attendance and angry fans, and it's entirely warranted, even though Epstein and Hoyer continue to deserve the trust of the skeptics.

Because soon, the Cubs could again be very good. No team in baseball can match its collection of hitting prospects, with Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, Albert Almora, Jorge Soler and Arismendy Alcantara. If even two or three of their current everyday players – preferably Anthony Rizzo, Starlin Castro and Welington Castillo – improve, suddenly come the kids' arrival, they're a wildly interesting team, especially should new manager Rick Renteria prove the sort of clubhouse presence the Cubs expect.

By then, the Cubs can opt out of their TV deal with WGN and start cashing in on their broadcast rights, and the renovations on Wrigley should have started, so long as they can find some sort of amicable settlement with the famous rooftops whose views the new park will restrict.

In the meantime, the Cubs have a chance to be really, really bad, especially if they can't come to terms on an extension with Jeff Samardzija and trade him, and even more especially if Edwin Jackson's $52 million deal goes as poorly in its second year as it did its first. Absent those, they're still a mess. That's what happens when a Chicago team tries to act like it's from Tampa.

SAVIOR

This spot seemed perpetually reserved for Theo Epstein, who was expected to ride in on a white horse and do his magic and win the Cubs a World Series for the first time in 4,826 years, or whatever it's at these days. Instead, Epstein's boss, Tom Ricketts, stole away the mantel because only he knows the answer to the imperative question in Lakeview: When the kids come, will he start spending? That's all anyone wants to know. This sub-$80 million payroll is tolerable for another year as long as it's not the new norm. If Ricketts welches on his word to spend, what's ugly already could get worse in a hurry.

HAIKU

Wrigley Field truly
Is a hallowed cathedral
Except for the troughs

I was right. You're welcome.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Bucky, did Brick take over your account?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

I had "Ricketts doesnt have the money to make this work" loooooong before you


You tried to blame Theo. Its obviously not Theo. Welcome to the right side.

Blame Theo? I think he was all in on the intentionally losing plan. He just didn't expect it to last this long.

I believe when Theo was hired one of the first things I said was "This gives Ricketts huge cover for losing. The $4M a year they are paying Theo allows them to cut payroll by massive amounts".

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Who would have thought when this guy got a call from Yahoo years ago to be a Roto baseball columnist anyone would care what he thinks of entire organizations plan.

he should have kept this one in the drawer because he looks like an idiot.

He is like the guy who shows up at farm on May 1 bitching that there is no corn and this guy is the worst farmer ever!

Now if you show up and there is no corn on Oct 1, then you can yell "This is the worst farmer ever"

*For the record, not happy about the path, but understand where we are trying to go and if we don't get there I will be the first to write about as scathing as an article /website as one could write....I might even enlist Barry Rozner to write it for me!

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Im not even gonna get in this debate with you. Anyone who reads knows you've spent hundreds of posts saying Theo was screwing over Cub fans. Several times I pointed out that Ricketts was to blame but you barely ever mentioned him and would go back to the Theo bashing. Recently you've shifted to talking about Ricketss a bit.


Anyway. Ricketts is the problem, as I said BEFORE he even bought the team officially

I don't know who this dickslap is ... I have even less a clue as to why someone would pay him to write this dreck.

First of all, who can forget that magical 85 win season of 2007? I mean, besides me.

Second, if they were such big boys, why did they do nothing at the trade deadline. Hendry said "We would've liked to have done one thing that we thought we had a chance to augment the bench in a limited role" .... really? That's what big time teams do? They don't, for example, trade for Mark Texiera (with an OPS of .963 you could suffer with him in the outfield)? Eric Gagne? How about Octavio Dotel? No, let's just consider a half-assed bench player move. Oh if we could only go back to the days of bad spending or no spending at all, no development, just Lou and Cubbie Blue.

It's one thing to call out the current folks in ownership and/or in charge, but for fucks sake let's not completely reinvent reality for the sake of filling out a column nobody ends up happy they read.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Passan worships Theo

it is more than a little Theo's fault for not understanding what he was getting himself into. I disagree.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Ok, yes. That part is true.

But as far as furthering the team, its not on Theo

That's probably true. As I said, Theo was all in on the tanking for draft picks with a payroll not fitting the dominant team in a major market like Chicago.

Ricketts gets more of the blame now because I think he's holding Theo back now. Theo came here with a plan to do exactly this. The only difference is timeframes. That is why it was fair for me to "blame Theo".

I guess I can't win with you on this topic. I blame Theo, and it's bad. I start blaming Theo less, and it's still bad.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I don't give a shit if he worships Ba'al, he's still remedial.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

they were good enough to go to the playoffs which gave them the same percentage chance of getting to a World Series.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Theo understood. He just wants the plan changed. Theo was 100% on board with this exact plan. He's no longer on board with it. He wants to win quicker. Ricketts doesn't seem to care about winning even though he met his wife in the bleachers. He cares more about building a hotel.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

no, but I thought it was a good read. My take away is, Theo is god, blame the owners!

Ricketts seems to be learning the lesson that the entire reason for the Cubs existing is not to allow recent college frat boys to skip out on entry level office positions for the day to go get wasted and look at girls and hang out with the bros.

No offense Kirkwood.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

You know you messed up when Bucky Chris starts blaming current management.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

but, see it is...Theo gave the ownership the excuse to be this way. No way this happens unless it's Theo...no other general manager would have given that kind of leeway. Plus, Theo has all the magical formulas to get guys that no one else thinks have any value! Right?

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Interesting read, and all honesty, quite a a sad read.

















That said,
Hows 2015 look now Elmhurst Steve and the like?

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The Cubs are a mess! And we're tired of business as usual!

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-- source

Hopefully the Hawks make a deep run so the time before football season starts again is short.

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Already picked which tank top I'll be wearing on opening day.

Also the what hell is this burrito shit with putting a haiku at the end of your article? That's an instant sign you're awful and your writing should never be read.

My God. The pressure on these prospects just gets bigger and bigger. All they have to do is come up and save a franchise. No big deal.

No, its good. Its just you werent saying that from the start.

Anyway, all will be well.

Wild Card

Im just saying, he may have an agenda to shift blame away from Theo

All I know is Theo has tied up so far 59 million on raw shit:

*Jackson Contract-52 mil
* Scott Baker-5 Mil
* Ian Stewart-2 mil


money to blow with zero results

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

I know you aren't a stats guy, but Jackson's output was pretty close to equaling his dollars (WAR converted to money expected in free agency) last year.

WAR was a song about war. Yes,you are correct about stats regarding me. I just think for the performance Jackson provided all year,they would have had more
success or an equal amount at least using 4-5 "Johnny 4a's" out there.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."