While the Chicago Cubs have been one of the more active teams in the sport this offseason, the lion’s share of their activity has come on the trade market.
They have added Matthew Boyd and Carson Kelly among others in free agency, but their more meaningful splashes came in acquiring Kyle Tucker from the Houston Astros and shedding the contract of Cody Bellinger in a trade with the New York Yankees.
It is not that the club can not spend on big-name free agents, it is that they have chosen not to do so, something that the Los Angeles Dodgers would never understand.
The Dodgers have signed nearly every meaningful free agent this offseason, and their shopping spree has drawn the ire of fans across the nation with many claiming they are ruining the sport.
While the excessive deferrals through a loophole in the current CBA need to be addressed with the next CBA, Los Angeles’s spending is not as big of a problem as the Cubs’ refusal to do so.
“If you’re a Cubs fan who’s in the mood to be angry,” writes Zachary D. Rymer in a recent article for Bleacher Report. “Wait ’til you get a load of what owner Tom Ricketts said at the team’s annual convention.”
‘”I don’t think fans should spend all their time thinking about which team has more money or how much they’re spending,’ Ricketts said in an interview with 670 The Score, per Bob Nightengale of USA Today. ‘It just becomes a big narrative that’s a distraction.’ Sorry, Tom, but it’s not a ‘narrative’ that the Cubs aren’t spending enough. When you juxtapose those revenues with those expenses, it looks a lot more like a fact.”
“Like the Red Sox, the time is right for the Cubs to go big. They have a clear pathway to the top of the NL Central after adding Kyle Tucker in a blockbuster trade, but they need more if they aspire to challenge the Dodgers.”
There are not many free agents of note left on the market, so the time has come and gone for Chicago to make any splashes in that realm this year.
It remains to be seen if the club will extend their newly acquired superstar Kyle Tucker, who will garner a hefty price, and their decision on that matter will be very telling of how the next few years will go.
Owner Tom Ricketts and President of Baseball Operations Jed Hoyer have a lot of work to do in the coming years if they want to fix the damage that they have caused by sitting out on spending, leaving the Dodgers to throw money at anyone with a pulse.