At their first Cubs Convention as owners in 2010, Tom, Laura, Pete and Todd Ricketts answered fans’ questions at a seminar and received a nice round of applause.
Todd Ricketts that day said the four siblings would stay out of the spotlight, much like previous Cubs bosses from Tribune Co.
“After today, I don’t think you’ll see a lot of us in the media,” Todd said. “Tom will be our spokesman, but I don’t think he’ll ever be commenting on the players or the team specifically.”
Fifteen years later, the Rickettses still avoid the media for the most part, including last month at spring training when Tom Ricketts bounced after giving his stump speech to the players before the first full-squad workout.
Beat writers were left with a lot of questions but no answers. The word was that Ricketts was in a hurry to begin a family vacation and had no time for any chitchat.
Fortunately he survived the family vacation and found some time this week to appear before a live Chicago audience for a CNBC Sports videocast. There was no booing or heckling about spending, so we can assume these were not your average Cubs fans.
Ricketts didn’t reveal any big news, though he did say the Cubs are the “team to beat” in the National League Central, that baseball is still “America’s pastime” and that the family only hopes to break even every year.
No, really.
“Well, maybe using the word ‘break even’ wasn’t the way I wanted to say that,” he admitted, correcting an earlier quote he gave to USA Today that Cubs fans “somehow think we have all these dollars that the Dodgers have or the Mets have or the Yankees have, and we just keep it. It’s not true. We just try to break even every year.”
So what is it then?
“Just want people to know that every dollar spent at the ballpark goes back into putting a more competitive team on the field,” he told CNBC. “Away from that, every Cubs fan knows we’ve invested roughly a billion dollars into Wrigley Field itself and the neighborhood around (it).
“So it’s not a matter of us not investing. We are putting the best team on the field that we can every year. But there are teams that have resources that we don’t, and (there is) nothing we can do about that. Fortunately for baseball, player development is as important as how much you’re spending on free agents. We just keep grinding and doing the blocking and tackling that build the organization from the bottom up and hopefully makes us competitive on a consistent basis.”
It was here that a notification from USA Today popped up on my phone reporting the Cubs were negotiating with former White Sox starter Lance Lynn, who turns 38 in May and has gone the entire winter unwanted.
Because of an inadvertent phone accident, I was forced to resume watching the CNBC video on my iPad.
Ricketts reiterated his stance that spending doesn’t mean anything in the postseason as long as you make it, which he said is the opposite of the NFL or the NBA, where “typically the team that had a better regular season almost always wins the playoffs matchup.”
“In baseball we just want to be consistent,” he said.
Ricketts said their strategy has “been the same since Day 1 — that’s be consistent and make the playoffs.”
The Cubs have not made the playoffs since 2020, and not in a full season since 2018. They have no postseason wins since 2017. That’s consistency.
But this year will be different, Ricketts said, thanks to team President Jed Hoyer’s deft offseason maneuvering.
“Jed Hoyer has done a pretty good job of bringing us back up from a couple bad years we’ve had,” he said. “We have a really good farm system, and we’ve supplemented it with several good free agents over the last couple years. Going into this year we should be the team to beat in our division, and if we win our division, then anything can happen. And we believe we’ll be back in the mix this year.”
“Anything Can Happen” should be the Cubs’ new marketing slogan. It’s not only true but it aptly describes the team’s philosophy when it comes to putting a roster together. Spend enough to contend, avoid getting over the luxury-tax threshold and cross your fingers come October.
Last year they paid $570,000 for exceeding the threshold by $2.85 million, so instead of signing a free-agent ace such as Corbin Burnes or Max Fried, the Cubs look for low-risk starters such as Matthew Boyd, Colin Rea and perhaps even a 37-year-old Lynn for a fraction of the cost. Instead of a getting a top third baseman in Alex Bregman, they sign backup infielder/DH Justin Turner for $6 million.
Asked about some players he might have regretted not getting, Ricketts recalled sitting with former President Theo Epstein and spending “a lot of time thinking about Bryce Harper’s worth as a free agent.”
“That’s one we kicked around that obviously we never executed on,” he said without elaborating on why the Cubs passed.
Curiously, when Harper was still available in February 2019, Ricketts was asked why they weren’t in on him or any other top unsigned free agent.
“”That’s a pretty easy question to answer,” he said. “We don’t have any more (money). The fact is that we’ve been in the top five in baseball spending for the last five or six years. We were in the top couple in spending last year. We’ve put our money back on the field. Unfortunately, you just can’t have a high-profile free agent every year, and part of that obviously is how much it costs — the $25 or $30 million it’s going to cost — plus it’s a 10-year commitment, and you’ve got to pay those dollars.”
Remember those words in November when we’ll find out whether the Cubs can keep their own high-profile free agent, Kyle Tucker, who should command more than the $25.6 million annual salary Harper received in 2019 with his 13-year, $330 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies.
Hoyer’s acquisition of Tucker means the Cubs should win the division in 2025, so maybe a one-year rental is the way to go. And if they do, Ricketts might get a chance to see if his theory on the MLB playoffs versus the NFL and NBA playoffs is valid.
Then again, who knows?
Anything can happen.
