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

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.