Cubs left high and dry thanks to confluence of perfect storms

In the midst of what can only be described as, at best, a terribly thrifty past three offseasons, the Cubs are in a bizarre situation (and it’s not really making any fans very happy at all). This organization has been and should be a large market team.

Their pecuniary measures and decisions should follow suit. They’d also been a wildly successful large market team from a competitive and fiscal standpoint before the pandemic hit . Just about to unveil a brand new TV network that was all their own in order to maximize profits coming back to the organization, the Cubs got stuck in the eye of the worst of all places: a perfect storm.

Check that; make it the confluence of about five different storms.

• They didn’t manage their money correctly or efficiently within the 1060 Project.
• Some of their trades and free agent signings didn’t pan out.
• They didn’t trade or stagger the extension of homegrown players when they should have, leaving the team in limbo with five different core position players.
• Marquee had carriage issues and didn’t generate buzz, ad revenue, or interest in a short 60-game season that didn’t start until July.
• And, of course, the whole, you know, pandemic that created biblical losses for everyone.

All that leaves us here in the present, staring down a 2021 season that is fast becoming the epitome of “meh” and has already featured the beginnings of a fire sale where the Cubs have non-tendered Kyle Schwarber, traded Yu Darvish for a few scratch-offs (that seemed to be more 20 million drawing-types rather than the recent billion dollar MegaMillions variety), and failed to resign any of the pitchers who could have given us some veteran depth heading into this already mediocre season.

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.