Cubs left high and dry thanks to confluence of perfect storms

Chicago Cubs: What are the chances these guys are Cubs in September?

Sure, the Cubs might still be competitive in the NL Central in ’21 given the fact that it’s terrible right now, but they’re going nowhere fast even if they do miraculously make it to the postseason. Chances are, they’ll advertise the blue light specials come July and real contending teams willing to spend money and win ball games will no doubt be coming after Willson Contreras, Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, and maybe even Kyle Hendricks.

And, just so you know, the offers won’t be mind-blowing. If this offseason is any indicator, Jed Hoyer will probably be looking for more scratch-offs, salary relief, and maybe a few dozen Rawlings.

How did this come to pass? How could it be this bad? Well, you have heard of that somewhat famous ship called the Titanic, right? Even the biggest, coolest, and newest ship sometimes meets its match in an otherwise innocuous piece of frozen water just floating around in the middle of the ocean. Sometimes, bad luck rears its ugly head in the midst of some other bad decisions. Then again, it’s awfully hard to see what’s coming without the gift of foresight.

Take Schwarber, for instance. As much as it pains me to say it, the Cubs probably should have traded Schwarber after the 2016 World Series at the height of his potential trade value. Cubs fans might have led full-scale riots on Wrigley Field and Theo Epstein’s office, but from where we’re standing right now, it would have been the right move in hindsight and may have landed them a young arm for the rotation. What was the line from that Kenny Rogers’ song?

Chicago Cubs: “Just pretend it’s flat ground!”

The Cubs probably shouldn’t have signed Tyler Chatwood, Brandon Morrow, or even Craig Kimbrel. I don’t know who the alternatives would have been at the time offhand, but those three didn’t work out very well. To be fair, even at the time each was signed, they were all pretty serious gambles due to injury history or previous ineffectiveness.

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The Cubs also should have signed a deal with Comcast, NBC Sports, or whatever conglomerate would have given the team hundreds of millions of dollars without any start-up costs. Sure, the club could have made more money going their own route in the best of all scenarios, but anyone could see the way cable was heading. Starting up your own channel and dealing with carriage concerns was enough of of an undertaking to question its viability and fiscal return. Then the pandemic hit and now Marquee already looks like as big of a flop as, well… the Titanic.

I realize that no one had any idea the pandemic was about to hit and upend everyone and every business in this country, but being a little less greedy probably would have served everyone a little bit better in hindsight.

Then again, there are probably a lot of things everyone would have done differently, both in their personal and professional lives, given what we know now.

Chicago Cubs: Who is handling the money?

I’m no accountant and I’m certainly not privy to the particulars of the 1060 project, but it seems to me that doubling your initial projected costs probably means you didn’t have the right people involved at some point.

Again, the Cubs are a private business and none of us know what kind of money has truly been spent and how it’s been managed, but by gleaning tidbits of information from different sources, it’s clear that the project cost way more than it was supposed to and put the Ricketts in a spot where the payroll was secondary to paying back debt. For a competitive and presently successful professional sports franchise, that’s never a good thing.

Also, I don’t know how much of an effort was made in extension talks with Baez, Contreras, and Bryant, but how can Anthony Rizzo not have an extension at this point? Maybe Bryant was always going to be too expensive and hard to deal with seeing as he’s a Scott Boras guy, but why didn’t the Cubs lock up their other young stars while they could have been had for below-market value long-term deals?

Maybe this was a “wait for the big Marquee money” roll of the dice, and maybe the plan all along was to trade some or let them walk, but it now looks like a terrible set of decisions that has led us to this point in January of 2021.

It’s said that hindsight is 20/20, so maybe it’s not fair to look back on every decision as an armchair quarterback. However, now that 2020 is over, perhaps 2021 will give us some new perspectives, better vision, and some better baseball decisions… I just feel like we’re not out of the eye of this storm quite yet.