Late Friday afternoon, numbers for teams that exceeded MLB’s competitive balance tax were posted online.
Well, the first thing about this is timing. Friday afternoon? slow? A week before many people start going on vacation?
of course. This was probably planned that way by MLB so that most people’s attention would be elsewhere. Nevertheless, BCB’s Sara Sanchez wrote an excellent review of all this on BCB After Dark last Friday evening or early Saturday morning. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should.
The literal bottom line is that the Cubs were $2.85 million above the $237 million CBT level and just a little more than they paid Patrick Wisdom in 2024 ($2.725 million). And keep in mind, the point of this article is not that the Cubs should do that. Not paying Wisdom in 2024. As a result, the luxury tax bill would be $570,309, which would require retrieving the old tax “The Ricketts might find it in the couch cushions,” joked.
Also, I’m not going to elaborate on Sarah’s question. It was, “Should the Cubs have spent more time trying to win last year?” If you’d like to discuss it further, the BCB After Dark link has a good discussion.
No, I’m here to criticize Cubs director of baseball operations Jed Hoyer for doing the exact opposite of what he said he would do years ago.
What?
You remember “spending wisely,” right?
What I’m here to tell you is that the opposite is why the Cubs ended up in this mess in 2024.
Specifically, there were four contracts, the worst two of which were signed before the start of the 2023 season.
These are the contracts of Trey Mancini (two years, $14 million) and Tucker Barnhart (two years, $6.5 million). Neither of these deals should have been signed. The Cubs signed Mancini as a first baseman in 2023, as well as Eric Hosmer (which wasn’t much of a blow since he was only being paid minimum salary), but both players underperformed. . Hosmer was released on May 25, 2023, and Mancini on August 2, 2023. Combined, the bWAR was -1.9. The Cubs could have given the first base job to Matt Mervis, who is out of spring training in 2023. Now, Marvis didn’t hit either…maybe he could have done better if he knew he had that spot. We’ll never know, but the money spent on Mancini was wasted in 2023, and the Cubs had to pay him $7 million to not play in 2024.
The same was true for Barnhart, who posted a .541 OPS and -0.6 bWAR in 43 games and was released on August 20, 2023. By that time, Miguel Amaya had established himself in the major leagues, and again, the Cubs had to pay Barnhart $3.25 million to not play in 2024.
Indeed, that’s $10.25 million in ill-advised spending that, if not done, could easily keep the Cubs below the 2024 tax level.
You could argue that there was more than $20 million in other spending in 2024 that shouldn’t have been done, but that’s pretty much a 20/20 argument.
That’s the 2024 contract option for Kyle Hendricks ($16.5 million) and Yan Gomez ($6 million).
It’s easy to criticize those choices now, but think about where those two players would be at the end of the 2023 season. Hendricks posted a 3.74 ERA and 1.4 bWAR, but there’s no indication he won’t be able to do that again in 2024, when he turns 34, which would have been enough for him to be the fifth starter. Well, you know what happened. The professor had failed his own class, and aside from a great ending at the last Cub Start, most of his 24 years had been terrible. Granted, the Cubs would have been better off saving that money and signing another player, but again, it’s a 20/20 argument.
The same goes for Gomez, who had an okay season with a batting average of .267/.315/.408 with 10 home runs and a bWAR of 1.7 in 116 games. Gomez is now 37 years old and could definitely have gotten worse, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted that in 2024 he would end up with an abysmal .421 OPS and -0.7 OPS in 34 games. He was released on June 21st due to his bWAR.
Could the Cubs have saved that $22.5 million and spent it on a player who would have been better? Absolutely. Did they ever expect both Hendricks and Gomez to be so bad in 2024? Absolutely not.
But wasting $10.25 million on Mancini and Barnhart in 2024 could have been avoided. Both players should not have been signed in the first place in 2023 after their poor performance with the Cubs, and it was foolish to give them two-year contracts.
And that’s the problem I think. It’s not that the Cubs should have spent more money in 2024, it’s that they should have avoided signing those two, and going back a little further, it’s that Andrelton Simmons (6 million in 2022) ($4 million in 2022) and Jonathan Villar ($4 million in 2022), both players were released due to poor play. They might as well have turned the $10 million into $1 bills and lit a fire to keep warm in Winterland at Wrigley Field.
That last part is a joke. generally.
The good news is that Mr. Hoyer finally seems to understand what “smart spending” means. The Kyle Tucker trade adds a standout hitter to the Cubs’ lineup, and trading Cody Bellinger to the Yankees will free up money to pay Tucker this year (and hopefully beyond), and use the rest of that money to sign a pitcher. It may be possible to spend it on. Carson Kelly was signed to a two-year contract as a catcher, but he’s a much better player than Barnhart, and the money was probably well spent. Matthew Boyd probably seemed overpaid until he looked at the other contracts pitchers signed this offseason.
The worst thing about the Cubs if they exceed CBT in 2024 is that the penalty for consecutively exceeding CBT is higher (though not burdensome), so they can’t exceed CBT and have more personnel for 2025. There is a high possibility that they will try to reduce it. We can see the Cubs spending up to about $10 million in taxpayer money heading into the season, but they are absolutely certain they won’t exceed that. Is this how the big market Cubs should operate? You and I would probably both agree that the answer is no, but that’s probably not the case at this point, at least until the Cubs and Marquee Sports Network terminate their contract with Comcast/Xfinity. That’s likely our position (at the moment they vary from month to month with that provider).
The good news is, based on the analysis we did here last week, even if the Cubs (for example) chose to stay at about $10 million below their starting tax level of $241 million in 2025 However, that still means there should be about $35 million left over at the end of the day. Spend money on players you can acquire via trade or free agency.
Give it a try, Jed.
