In Defense of Tom Ricketts

The Ricketts Family is, to be clear, shifty. They don’t come right out and say things. They cry poor when the Cubs aren’t poor, they won’t open their books (just like the rest of MLB owners), they won’t just make it clear that they aren’t in the free agent market at times when they obviously aren’t in the free agent market. I’m not a pro-Ricketts guy.

But.

The Ricketts Family isn’t the bogeyman they’re made out to be.

Per The Baseball Cube, the Cubs were among the eight highest payrolls in baseball every year from 2016-19, peaking at second in ’19 (The Baseball Cube doesn’t have data yet on 2020 or ’21). The Cubs weren’t not spending money. They also accomplished the very-difficult-to-accomplish accomplishment of grabbing a World Series title. The Ricketts Family did it fairly early in their time at the helm in a place where it hadn’t been done in…you know the number. This should not be understated. The ownership group’s responsibility in winning championships is hard to measure, but it’s not nothing. The Cubs won a World Series, the Ricketts Family helped do that, we are all glad they did.

The Ricketts Family spent money. The Ricketts Family won a World Series. But there’s more than that, too.

There’s been a lot of heat directed at the Cubs for getting rid of all three beloved players this year at the trade deadline. It’s been cast as a cost-saving move, and to be sure, it does save cost. But it also helps give the 2023-and-beyond team a chance to win. Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, and Javier Báez haven’t been getting better. Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, and Javier Báez are all expensive. The bad-owner thing to do? Tell your front office to hold onto those guys at all costs for fear of losing the marketing value they represent. Instead, the Ricketts Family gave Jed Hoyer the green light to tear it down, when it’s possible a teardown was really necessary. Might he have missed? Sure. But they didn’t stand in his way. They left the baseball decision to the smartest baseball person they could find.

Going back to the free agency sleight-of-hand, too: What were they supposed to say back when the moratorium on big deals was evidently in place? The situation was that Theo Epstein (whom I love—not trying to hate on Epstein here, just trying to treat him with some dose of realism) had one of the largest payrolls in baseball plus a bunch of affordable young talents (some historic) and couldn’t win the division. Would free agents have helped? Sure. But the Cubs also might have ended up with another Jason Heyward on their hands, or a Carl Crawford, as happened to Boston late in Epstein’s time there.

I don’t like the Ricketts Family either. But what the hell else do you want from them?