5 Chicago Cubs arguments that need to be debunked immediately

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Sports can unite people. As beautiful as it can be to see the celebrations in the streets between multiple generations of Cubs fans after the 2016 World Series, it’s almost equally upsetting to see the divisiveness that comes from the Cubs’ current willingness to spend money.

While everyone can agree when a team is winning, the disagreements can come in bunches when the team has room to improve and one thing that a lot of baseball fans have in common is an air of superiority and condescension. It can be hard to disagree with your friends when they’re using advanced sabermetrics that you’ve never heard of, or dismissing you’re willingness to spend money (that’s not yours) to improve the team that you’re paying to watch.

That’s why we’re here!

Below, you’ll find some statements that your friends may make about why it’s ok, a good thing even, that the Cubs aren’t going to “overspend” on free agents. You’ll also find some responses that we’ve cooked up so that you’re never left defenseless in these verbal altercations.

The Cubs are doing the smart thing. We should be focused on sustained success and not just winning this season.

Sure. This is something a lot of people do in arguments; they say something that is clearly good and then because they’ve said it they imply that the only way to reach that goal is through their side of the argument.

All Cubs fans want to have sustained success, that’s not unique to the fans who have drunk the Kool-Aid of fiscal responsibility. However, paying for a winner in 2024 and winning for an extended period of time are not mutually exclusive.

Beyond that, in order to have sustained success you have to first… experience success.

The last time the Cubs won the division in a full season was in 2017. Before you can have a dynasty you have to actually win the first one and the Cubs refusing to negotiate beyond their comfort zone has prevented that window from actually opening to begin with.

Response: We should always be focused on winning this season first, and then focus on sustained success.

The Cubs have made the right decisions in the past when their players have signed massive contracts with other teams, trust the process.

This comment is generally directed to when the Cubs traded away their core in 2021.

Players like Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez, Kyle Schwarber, and Willson Contreras have all moved on to new locations and have signed for far more than the Cubs were willing to offer and they’ve all struggled to some extent.

The first counter to this argument is that these players may have been amenable to negotiating prior to free agency and potentially even prior to their arbitration years.

However, the Cubs front office (including then GM Jed Hoyer) was disinterested in those negotiations and in the case of Kris Bryant actively diminished his value by holding him down to start the 2015 season to get an additional year of team control out of him.

Even if we disregard the emotional component and the fact that the men in the front office didn’t value the contributions of these players enough to keep them around long-term, it’s important to look at those players compared to the players the Cubs currently have.

Anthony Rizzo had 0.5 WAR at first base for the Yankees last season despite a concussion that limited him to nearly non-existent power and just 99 games played. Compare that to the first basemen the Cubs played last season Jared Young (-0.1), Patrick Wisdom (0.3), Eric Hosmer (-0.5), Jeimer Candelario (0.1), Matt Mervis (-0.4), and Trey Mancini (-1.4) and Rizzo was a better player by 2.5 WAR. Even if you include Cody Bellinger who had a 4.4 WAR but spent the majority of his time in the outfield, Rizzo still would have been a valuable player.

Willson Contreras was a 3.4 WAR player last season despite everyone universally thinking that it was a good thing that the Cubs let him walk and laugh when the Cardinals took him off of the catcher for a few days. He was expensive and a defensive liability. The Cubs' combination of Yan Gomes, Miguel Amaya, and Tucker Barnhart combined for 1.0 WAR.

Since Kyle Schwarber left the Cubs he’s had more WAR over those four seasons (6.0) than he did in his six seasons with the Cubs (5.8).

Bryant and Baez have obviously struggled mightily and in those situations, the team may have done the right thing by not extending them but three out of the five players listed above would have helped the 2023 team make the playoffs, something they didn’t do.

Response: That's a little bit of revisionist history, and a little bit of confirmation bias mixed together to make a pretty gross cocktail.

Maintaining financial flexibility is as important to building a winning team as the players are.

Again, sure.

Financial flexibility is good because it allows you to make purchases when something unforeseen pops up. It allows you to go fishing in the big pond when a superstar free agent is available. It allows you to take care of the guys that have taken care of your franchise.

The Cubs don’t do those things though.

The longest contract extension the Cubs have given in the last decade is to David Bote. The biggest free agent they’ve signed in the last decade was last year’s fourth-best available shortstop (no disrespect intended to Dansby Swanson).

The purpose of having financial flexibility is to flex that financial flexibility. They don’t give World Series rings at the end of the season to the team that had the most wins while also staying under the competitive balance tax.

Response: Nobody has ever received a couple of runs as a handicap in a World Series game by showing how far under the CBT threshold they are.

Spending big on free agents is almost always a bad investment, especially when you have to overspend.

Do you drive a car?

Cars are bad investments too because they lose their value almost as soon as you get them, however, they provide a necessary service to your life, so you suck it up and buy one.

Free agents may not be as valuable as prospects on team-friendly deals, but since 2018 there hasn’t been a team with a payroll ranked outside of the top ten to win a World Series, so if the goal is to win then free agent “overspending” is necessary.

Response: Recent track record has shown that the teams unwilling to spend beyond their comfort zone don't win the big one.

Spending money just to spend money doesn’t make any sense.

Again, this is something we can all agree on, but it doesn’t make it unique to the argument of not spending money.

If we were to use Cody Bellinger as our example, let’s say the Cubs have to blow past their comfort zone and sign him to a seven-year deal worth $190 million dollars. That’s not spending money just to spend money.

Are the Cubs a better team with Cody Bellinger? Yes.

Will that ~$28 million AAV hurt the team moving forward if the prospects in the farm system should open the window as wide as we all hope? No.

The final thing to keep in mind with this is this analogy:

Imagine Tom Ricketts is a landlord (something he’s much more comfortable with than owning a baseball team seemingly).

You, as a fan, are his tenant.

You attend the games or watch them on TV which funnels money into his pockets and he continues to raise the cost of the tickets/concessions/streaming costs etc. which in this case would correlate to your rent costs.

Unfortunately, he’s done nothing to improve the apartment you’re renting from him. He keeps telling you how amazing the apartment was back in 2016 and that if you just keep waiting the apartment will be great again in a couple of years, but he won’t fix your garbage disposal to make it great now.

I don’t know about you, but I’d probably move out of that apartment.

Response: No one is recommending that. There's such a thing as intelligent spending, but there's also such a thing as ignorant saving.

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