Chicago Cubs: Top 3 ways Tom Ricketts is looking to save his budget

Chicago Cubs: Get them while they’re young

3. Player development

So this is good news Chicago Cubs fans; because we have a genius named Tom Ricketts that bought the Chicago Cubs and had the foresight to hire some good business managers when they first acquired the team, Ricketts invested money into player development and now he’s hoping that can help along with a couple other things –ease the budget this season for the second highest spending team in MLB.

To ensure that Player Development is going to take off, the Chicago Cubs announced just last month a bunch of moves in the front office’s leadership to include Senior Vice President Matt Dorey and Director of Player Development Bobby Basham. The Cubs also announced new Directors of Hitting Justin Stone and Pitching Craig Breslow and Jeremy Farrell as their assistant Director of Baseball Development via press release.

The Chicago Cubs are also hoping for amazing results from their scouting teams and so moved Jaron Madison to be a special assistant to the president/general manager, a role the Cubs said will have an “emphasis on professional, amateur and international scouting,” and moved senior vice president of amateur scouting and player development Jason McLeod to become their senior vice president of player personnel.

While the Cubs have been successfully drafting outfielders to support their pitching, they have neglected their homegrown pitching. The MLB-level pitchers the Cubs are supposed to rely on right now, have stalled in their progress.

“We have to refocus on developing players… We have to be able to develop players that we bring up because over the next couple years we are going to lose some of the guys. There’s no way that everyone can stay on this team forever because they’re all going to become free agents around the same time. We have to manage that…The real key for us is to focus on developing the players that will be our future because you just can’t buy your way into a championship,” Ricketts said. “Teams that signed the big free agents really didn’t move forward this year.”

While many of these moves in the Chicago Cubs player development lanes could have been done last year or the year before – this is the year of shake-up by Ricketts for his ball club and again, if he is successful, will save his budget big dollars in the long run. Will it be too little too late?

Chicago Cubs: Time for the draft to get logical

2. Draft better

I’m not the first person to say that the Chicago Cubs have been all over the block on draft picks. For years before 2017, the Cubs mainly drafted outfielders.  The thought process was, the team needed golden glove capable outfielders to support the pitching staff. Batting was not the emphasis when picking these players, as the focus was on gloves and batting was expected to be developed later. Hence the 2010 -2015 fifth place run the Cubs put up during those years.

Another reason the Chicago Cubs need to watch their spending is that beginning in 2018  an additional penalty was  added to the Collective Bargaining Agreement’s second threshold for big spending teams.

A team that spent above the former $237 million threshold would also have its top draft pick lowered by ten spots, unless that pick was in the top six, in which case the team’s second pick would then be lowered by ten spots.

Over-spending could cost valuable draft picks that the Cubs so desperately need.

It seems that the Cubs have finally found common ground on drafting bats for the Cubs after the dismal performances on offense the last two seasons. It’s almost a checklist item for new prospects no matter what position they are signing on for (although pitchers are still given leeway for batting).

It goes without saying that Cubs are always looking for pitchers in the draft but with possible moves in the near future of Cubs shortstop Javier Baez, Catcher Willson Contreras and third baseman Kris Bryant, Epstein might be looking for some slugging infielders as well this year. Either way, Ricketts will have to do better to compensate for the losses he may have when selecting players for the draft. Again, another opportunity to make money and help the overall budget just by drafting better or wiser – you choose.

What is the number one way Ricketts will help his budget next season?

Chicago Cubs: All free agents are equal?

1.  Manage free agents better

It’s no secret that the Cubs have been living off free agency the last few seasons. Now Tom Ricketts has had enough of free agency and is looking to the draft and player development to start saving him some money in the budget. The team also has to look at the longevity of their current squad and not just putting everything into this season and going dead last the following season as ESPN’s Jesse Rogers reported Theo Epstein mentioned:

“There are examples of teams that go right up to the end of their contention window with their players and then all of a sudden face a long-term, painful rebuild,” Epstein said. “That’s not something we’re interested in. The art of it will be to maximize all the talented players that we have now and also make sure we’re in really good position for the long term.” More from Chicago Cubs News Cubs starting pitching has been thriving on the North Side Make no mistake: the Cubs are very much about power hitters 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 Cubs might start to limit Justin Steele’s workload soon

Tom Ricketts mentioned during his interview with the Mully & Haugh Show,  670 The Score that spending money in free agency was high risk. In his view all of the players out there are the same. Ricketts believes that free agency is full of good players that have something wrong with them. Considering that we’ve signed Hall of Fame free agents like  Cubs pitcher Greg Maddux back in 2004, Ricketts may want to consider that there still may be a few good ones out there in free agency.

What Ricketts would like to do is save the free agent money until the season is under way and find a solution to a problem like pitching or batting. You also never know when a player might get injured and need a back-fill from free agency as well. In a way, they’re like kids trading baseball cards and waiting for that right moment to pick up a star player’s card.

Ricketts will need to shuffle his deck twice for free agency and hope that the draft and his player development department will help save some of his budget this season and in the near future.

One thing is pretty clear: Ricketts isn’t going to spend – until he needs to.