The Chicago Cubs are the 4th most valuable team in MLB but can't be bothered to spend

Current Player Retention

When asked whether he and the Cubs had any discussions of a contract extension that would allow him to make more than the $4 million dollar arbitration salary he’s due in 2024, Cy Young runner-up Justin Steele simply said “no.”

Everyone applauded when the Cubs wisely refused to re-sign Willson Contreras. He was expensive and a defensive liability. Everyone laughed when Contreras was removed as catcher for a brief stint by the Cardinals and made to be an expensive designated hitter for about a week. However, Contreras got the last laugh as he accounted for 3.4 WAR according to baseball reference and the Cubs combination of Yan Gomes, Miguel Amaya and Tucker Barnhart combined for 1.0 WAR.

Production costs money. It's as simple as that and the Cubs, for whatever reason, don't appear willing to accept that.

It's bad enough that insiders recently picked 18 players likely to sign a long-term extension with their club and there wasn't a single Chicago Cub on the list. Not Justin Steele, not Christopher Morel who just finished his age-24 season and improved his slash-line in all three categories as well as nearly doubling his homer output, and not the Cubs top prospect, Pete Crow-Armstrong. People across the industry know, the Cubs don't re-sign their players.

Chicago is the third largest media market in the country and have a bigger gap between their cross-city rivals in valuation than the other two largest markets (Yankees to Mets and Dodgers to Angels). 

The Chicago Cubs are the 4th most valuable team in Major League Baseball according to Forbes.

The value of the team has increased steadily (even through COVID) from $700 million when the Ricketts family bought the team in 2009, to $1.2 billion in 2014, to $4.1 billion based on last year’s data.

So the question has to become: 

How has a team that is this valuable, that has produced this much homegrown talent, allowed so much of it to walk away? 

I’m not sure that we can get to the bottom of that question, but something that we as fans have to do is hold this team accountable. 

Winning a World Series in 2016 was fun, but don’t forget that there had been 108 years' worth of suffering before that. I refuse to accept that one World Series victory in the midst of all of that rebuilding was worth it, and you should refuse it too.

This is a long quote pulled from an article at the Athletic by Patrick Mooney and Sahadev Sharma, but it’s important to see how deeply the willingness to trust the process runs:

The Cubs don’t spend money at the same level as the New York Yankees or Los Angeles Dodgers. The Cubs haven’t done the kind of 11-year, $288.7 million contract extension the Kansas City Royals just closed with young star Bobby Witt Jr. The Cubs don’t believe in awarding the type of lifetime achievement contract the Houston Astros just handed Jose Altuve. The Cubs haven’t collected No. 1 picks by tanking as much as the Baltimore Orioles. The Cubs didn’t mortgage their farm system this winter for an ace pitcher such as Corbin Burnes.

The Cubs don’t spend money like their two closest market-size and Forbes valued competitors. Why?

The Cubs haven’t done long-term extensions with talented prospects. Why?

The Cubs don’t award lifetime achievement. Why?

The Cubs didn’t mortgage their farm system this winter for an ace pitcher. Why?

If the Cubs don’t do any of those things, then what the hell do they do?

What the Cubs have done in this offseason, is nothing. 

They signed Shota Imanaga, and that’s fantastic because Justin Steele had positive things to say about seeing him on the mound. However, he was signed just days before Cubs Con and signed the seventh largest contract given to a pitcher with Jordan Montgomery and Blake Snell both still available and likely to receive more than Imanaga’s four-year $53 million dollar deal. 

Last season the Cubs spent intelligently, because that’s all Hoyer does. 

In that intelligent spending, he went after guys like Cody Bellinger on a one-year “prove it” deal (which he did), and Dansby Swanson on the second-largest contract given out in team history and those two were incredibly valuable. However, he also neglected the bullpen and thought that Trey Mancini and Eric Hosmer could handle first base which accounted for $-22.4 million dollars in value according to bleacher report, making the Cubs the 16th most efficient team in baseball at overperforming their contracts. 

An incredibly frustrating aspect of this team is that the Cubs want to have it both ways. They want to be efficient like a small-market team like the Tampa Bay Rays or the Baltimore Orioles who are first and second on that list respectively. However, they also want to be a valuable organization like the Dodgers and Yankees who are first and second on the Forbes list respectively.

So what can we do about it?

As a fan I couldn’t care less about being on top of either of those lists. 

I want to be on top of the standings list and I want a front office and ownership group that want the same thing. 

I don’t want a real-estate company masquerading as MLB owners. I don’t care if the PGA Tour needs an investment and our owner was nearly a part of that. I certainly don’t want to hear about how hard it is to be an owner of one of the most beloved franchises in all of sports, let alone baseball. 

I don’t go to a game to watch Jed Hoyer’s cost-efficient brainchild on the field. I don’t go to Wrigley to stay in one of the Ricketts family’s hotels. 

I go to watch the players that I love on the team that I love win baseball games. 

So figure it out and pay them. It really and truly is as simple as that, so as fans let’s stop making excuses for anything less.

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