Chicago Cubs: Not shoring up this core is nothing short of negligent

Championship windows close quickly and by not supplementing the current core, the Chicago Cubs are bordering on negligence in their inactive offseason.

As a fan base, after four short years, Chicago Cubs faithful take winning for granted – right? Well, not if you take their downright outrage over the team’s lack of action this winter as evidence. Heading into Cubs Convention this weekend in downtown Chicago, the Wrigley Faithful are in an uproar – and chairman Tom Ricketts’ comments Thursday morning did little to help matters.

Ricketts talked with 670 WSCR AM on Thursday after reports surfaced online the day prior regarding his decision to not host an annual panel with ownership this weekend. Fans pretty much universally decried this move – and saw it as a cowardly decision by an owner who calls himself one of the most accessible in the game.

When asked about the matter, he tried to turn things into a joke, saying, “People would rather watch the mascot play bingo than listen to the owners speak,” – but Twitter lit him up immediately, and things really only got worse from there.

Chicago Cubs: It’s bigger than money at this point, isn’t it?

Obviously, one of the Cubs’ biggest storylines is their pursuit of major free agents this winter – well, really, their lack thereof. In an offseason headlined by two superstar talents in their mid-20s (Bryce Harper and Manny Machado), Chicago has seemingly decided that right now is the time they’ll stop spending.

“But frankly, we have one of the largest budgets in all of baseball. We put that to work, we’ve definitely signed a lot of players over the years. We have a team that we like. We have a team that we think is going to go a long way. We have a team that won 95 games last year without a lot of help from some of the guys we picked up last offseason,” Ricketts said, “And all the different things that we fought through last year – the injuries, everyone’s having kind of down years, some of the off-field distractions…we like our club.  And we’re among the very top spenders. So, I just think all that stuff’s kind of misguided.”

More from Cubbies Crib

• Cubs starting pitching has been thriving on the North Side
• Make no mistake: the Cubs are very much about power hitters
• Cubs are giving pitcher Javier Assad a deserved shot
• Cubs: It’s time to start thinking about potential September call-ups
• Cubs: P.J. Higgins deserves to be in the lineup on a daily basis

First, he’s not wrong in most of what he says here. In the last four years, Chicago has doled out significant contracts to the likes of Jon Lester, Jason Heyward, Ben Zobrist, Brandon Morrow, Tyler Chatwood and Yu Darvish.  The Cubs, did, in case you’ve forgotten, win 95 games. But winning 95 games means jack-diddly when you lose to the Colorado Rockies in the Wild Card game. 

Injuries? Well, two of the aforementioned big signings, Morrow and Darvish, both missed more than half the season with injuries. Speaking of those two right-handers, according to Ricketts, Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein knew that if he added those two, this would be a quiet winter.

“When you make any free agent signing – not to pick on Darvish – you know you can’t spend that dollar twice, and you have to budget that into the future. So that’s going to limit what you can do the following year … One of the things we knew coming into this offseason was that we weren’t going to have as much flexibility as years past. We didn’t have big contracts coming off. We didn’t have a lot more cash coming in.”

I have a hard time believing the Cubs would go out and give Darvish $126 million or Chatwood $39 million knowing it would prevent them from pursuing a generational talent in Bryce Harper this winter. Perhaps more relevant, though, is why they would then pick up a $20 million option on left-hander Cole Hamels to kick off the offseason if that were the case.

Really, it makes no sense.