The Cubs are idolizing the wrong teams

And why Cody's return isn't bad news, unless the Cubs make it that way

The Cubs are idolizing the wrong teams

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On Monday, Sahadev and Mooney co-authored a look into how the Cubs are cutting back on actual scouts and going all in on video and analytics—you know, things they don’t have to pay or give health benefits to.

If you thought the tone of the piece kept shifting from “this is a smart idea” to “the Cubs should be able to afford both scouts and analysts” it did. I don’t have to tell you who wrote which parts.

The whole idea that they want to emulate what the cheap ass Dolan Family owned Guardians are doing (with such incredible championship success) is as frustrating as it is unsurprising.

The Cubs are owned by a gaggle of adult children who didn’t do shit to earn their money. Just like the Bears. Both managed to win a title while they were in charge (somehow) and neither ever seem to want to do that again.

That’s not fair. I genuinely think George McCaskey wants to win another Super Bowl. He’s just too fucking stupid to do anything about it.

Apparently Jed and his thrift store gang of front office lackeys think that the way to build the “next kind of good but not great Cubs team” is to do it just like noted perennial World Championship teams like the Guardians the Brewers and the Rays.

The flaw in this thinking isn’t just that they have the financial resources to not have to nickel and dime their way to glory, but more that their front office is full of morons. If you want to spend less and win more you need smart people doing smart things and making smart decisions. The Cubs have dumb people doing dumb things and making dumb decisions.

It’s perfectly Cub that after a postseason where they had the seventh largest payroll and the six teams ahead of them advanced to the World Series (Dodgers and Yankees), the NLCS (Mets), had the best record in baseball (Phillies), made the playoffs for the eighth straight season (Astros), and overcame a flurry of injuries to make the playoffs for the seventh straight season (Barves), that the Cubs think the key to winning is the opposite.

The Cubs haven’t made the playoffs in a full season now in six years.

They aren’t trying to emulate the Guardians, Brewers and Rays because of all the World Series trophies those three teams have combined to accumulate in the last 75 seasons (none). Their aspirations are clearly not to win anything important. Just to spend less while pretending they want to.

They want to be seen as scrappy overachievers. Well tough shit, you have a ludicrously lucrative team in the third biggest market in the nation. You don’t get to be scrappy. You’re just supposed to be good. And fun to watch.

And you are neither.

And even if you thought they weren’t being disingenuous about their motives for cutting back on scouting, you’d have to conclude that they’re just going about it wrong. One of the reasons the Rays punch above their weight is that they do have a large scouting staff. They skimp on payroll, not on scouting, analytics or development.

The team the Cubs should be measuring themselves against…

…is the Dodgers. They have all of the same built in advantages that LA has. A rabid fan base that loves for any excuse to waste a shitload of money on their team, billions of dollars to spend, a lucrative TV deal (well, not that) and a place players want to live and play. The Dodgers spend a lot of money on payroll, on scouting, on their minor league facilities, and they are not afraid of the mostly mythological luxury tax penalties.

I’d also like to know what imaginary planet any of this (other than the part about Hoyer never making the playoffs as a top exec) is true:

With money to spend, prospects available for trades, and mounting pressure to produce, Hoyer will be one of baseball’s most interesting figures to watch this winter. He is entering the final season of a five-year contract with no playoff appearances as the Cubs’ top baseball executive.

More money means more decisions — which for the Cubs means more dependence on their analytical model than ever before.

“More money means more decisions?” Why are we still pretending that they’re going to be actively trying to spend any of it? The entire premise of the article is that the Cubs are cutting costs and counting on their magical spreadsheets to point them to good players who don’t cost anything.

And I guess Jed will be “one of baseball’s most interesting figures to watch this offseason” if you’re fascinated by a guy not doing anything bold or fun.

The piece goes on to detail how the Cubs didn’t send scouts to evaluate Isaac Paredes or Nate Pearson before they traded for either of them. They didn’t need to scout Paredes in person because they signed him out of Mexico a decade ago and so that was enough, I guess. I mean, who changes in ten years? As for Pearson, they took a look at his photo on his Baseball Reference page and couldn’t resist trading for a sweaty moon faced boy reminiscent of a young Calvin Schiraldi.

Sold!

If you told me that the reason they fired the scouts they did was because those are the ones who told Jed to trade for Nick Madrigal, sign Trey Mancini and go get Jose Cuas, I’d tell you that’s great. But to go hire better scouts, not hire none.

The Cubs are literally putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage because Tom’s tired of signing off on expense reports. “Did that guy really need to stay at the Super 8 in Pocatello? Couldn’t he just sleep in his Ford Fiesta?”

Here’s another doozy.

Spending money on good players like Dansby Swanson, Shota Imanaga, Jameson Taillon and Seiya Suzuki — while also reaching contract extensions with Ian Happ and Nico Hoerner — gave the Cubs some hope of putting out a respectable product. But there is an internal understanding that this roster is not fully formed.

I like that Happ and Nico are semantically left out of the “good players” grouping. But are we really supposed to give Jed’s front office credit for winning an average of 78 games the last four seasons and being big enough to admit that the roster’s “not fully formed?”

I would also argue that consecutive 83 win seasons while playing in one of the least competitive divisions in the sport isn’t “respectable.” It’s embarrassing.

And Jed’s last quote in the piece?

“I feel great about where we are as an organization. And I think the fans should feel good about it, too.”

Of course Jed feels great about having a team that’s mediocre, boring and inconsequential.

The team is the personification of their president of baseball operations.

Remember when Jed spent like five minutes in his end of the season press conference basically advising Cody Bellinger to opt out of his contract and go get a bigger offer somewhere else?

When we signed that deal in late February, we knew that if he had a good year, we knew that he would have a lot of options. He had a good year, and so I think he'll have options. Obviously, he didn't have quite the year he had last year. Like last year, he was an MVP candidate, I think. But when you look at the totality of the year he had, I think had roughly an 800 OPS on the road. I think his home OPS was 200 points lower than last year. And that's kind of how Wrigley played. So I expect him to have a lot of options. Obviously, it will impact team building. I think just figuring out what positions we're filling and he is versatile, but it'll have an impact. But like I said, I expect he'll have a bunch of options given how he played this year.

Look at how many times he said “options.” Jed was trying to subliminally convince Cody to exercise his option to leave.

Then, last week, Jordan Bastian of Cubs.com and Sahadev and Mooney from both reported that from what they “were hearing” that Cody was going to opt out and go out on the market. They both even used the same logic. That there are no good offensive centerfielders in free agency this year, so Cody would have no competition.

Apparently their sources were just Deep Jed. He was trying manifest Cody’s departure so he could take the $27.5 million and spend it on some other impact player.

Hahahahahaha.

Just kidding. That money was going right into Tom Ricketts’ desk drawer.

I’m pretty sure that Cody’s agent, Scott Boras, also wanted Cody to go out on the market. I’m sure Scott had a ton of new puns about “Bellinger is the bellweather and he’s the sheep wearing a bell that a contending team needs to follow to find the World Series” or some shit. Boras wanted to go out and find some sucker owner to overpay Cody to make up for the lack of offers he got last year.

However, I think there are three reasons Cody said, “fuck it, I’m staying.”

  1. He actually likes playing for the Cubs. It is a pretty sweet deal. Great city, fun ballpark, a team that is at least kind of trying to win—just not hard enough—and no shortage of dispensaries to choose from.
  2. Cody thinks that the reason he turned his career back around in 2023 with the Cubs had a lot to do with a) him being healthy but also b) signing early and getting to train at the team facility just a few miles from his winter home. He put in a shitload of work in that offseason and felt like it was the main reason he was good again. And then last year he didn’t sign until February 27 and not only did he not get to work out at Sloan Park in the offseason, he even started spring training late. I think in Cody’s mind he’ll have a “normal” offseason this year, have a better year and then can go back out on the market next year. And as a fallback, if that doesn’t work, the Cubs will have to pay him $25 million for 2026.
  3. He knows that Boras is going to hold the market hostage to drive up the price on Juan Soto. And he knows that the strategy would have been to wait until some team gives Soto his $600 million and then shop Cody to one of the runners up who still need an outfielder. And I don’t think Cody wants to wait that long, again. If he’d had a better 2024 would have have been more likely to risk that? Yes. But despite what Jed tried to sell us in October, Cody didn’t have a good enough 2024 to want to risk that.

Is it bad for the Cubs that Cody is coming back?

Only if they let it be.

He’s a good player. He’s one of their best players. It’s very likely that his 2025 production will fall somewhere in between his 2023 season: (4.4 WAR) .307/.356/.525, 26 homers, 97 RBI and his 2024 season (2.2 WAR) .266/.325/.426, 18 homers, 78 RBI. He missed 32 games in both seasons, and his OPS+ was 139 in ‘23 and then 111 in ‘24.

If the “one WAR is worth $8 million” thing is still a thing he was worth $35.2 million in 2023 when they paid him $17.5 million, and $17.6 million in 2024 when they paid him $27.5 million. To be worth his salary in 2025 he needs to be worth 3.4 WAR. He can do that.

The problem with Cody coming back isn’t Cody. It’s the roster construction that shitty handymen Jed and Carter have done. An offense that needs to add at least one impact bat even with Cody’s return, has few ways to improve.

Ian Happ has a no-trade clause in left, Seiya Suzuki will share right field and DH with Cody and he has a no-trade clause, Dansby Swanson has a no-trade clause at short. Nico Hoerner just had arm surgery so he’s basically untradeable now until during the 2025 season. That leaves centerfield, which is occupied by Petecrow Armstrong who the Cubs are surely afraid to trade in case he ends up being as good as everyone wants him to be. Catcher is taken in part by Miguel Amaya who despite a strong finish to the season had a mostly rough year and has very little trade value. That leaves Michael Busch at first and Isaac Paredes at third.

Busch was a 26 year old rookie who put up solid numbers but it’s hard to believe most teams don’t think they already have a reasonable facsimile of him somewhere in their system. Paredes was an All-Star for the Rays who somehow managed to slug .140 at Wrigley in the two months he played for the Cubs.

No shit. .140! One extra base hit in 96 plate appearances. It was a homer. Into the basket.

It’s not just that the Cubs have too many decent players without any great ones, they somehow have painted themselves into a corner and can’t move hardly any of them.

The ideal would be to shop Happ and do what it takes to convince him to waive his no-trade. With him you can at least sell the idea of versatility. He’s played a lot of defensive positions (though despite his THREE Gold Gloves in left none all that well), he switch hits (though for most of his career he’s been useless batting right handed) he hits for power (he’s never hit more than 25 homers in a season) and he runs pretty well (he’s never stolen more than 14 bases). He seems like a really nice player until you watch him play all the time and then you realize he’s just sort of good at things but not really good at anything. As for winning his third Gold Glove on Sunday. It’s great. Very impressive. Aren’t all Gold Glove outfielders -2 outs above average? He was in the 35th percentile of all outfielders on defense. Seems great. He had an objectively and statistically poor defensive season last year. But the easiest way to win Gold Gloves is to have already won one. But sell some stupid team on that.

Petecrow was in the 98th percentile on defense. He had 16 more outs above average than Happer. In nearly 300 fewer innings. This is why it’s so stupid that they’re not just giving the Gold Gloves to the three best outfielders any more. If you were any good in left you’d be playing somewhere else.

Trading Paredes seems like something they could do. He’s kind of a nice player. But the Rays tried to trade him and finally settled for taking a flyer on Christopher Morel at the very bottom of his value. That’s what a good GM got for Isaac. Imagine how much less Jed would get.

The Cubs will be connected to some big name free agents all offseason. Hell, on Saturday, Jim Bowden said the Cubs should sign both Pete Alonso and Anthony Santander, and this was AFTER Cody opted back in. (Before Cody opted in, Jimbo predicted he’d get a four year $112 million deal from Houston.) Sure. Why not? Why not have Happ, Petecrow, Seiya, Cody, Busch, Santander and Alonso all vying for playing time at five positions. Seems like something the Cubs would do. You know old Tom “Hey, it’s only money” Ricketts.

What is most likely to happen this offseason is for them to head to spring training with a very familiar starting position group. Happ, Petecrow, Cody, Seiya, Busch, Nico, Dansby, Isaac and Amaya. Counsell is going to demand that they give him a serviceable bench this year. So they’ll try to improve over Wisdom as the righthanded first base/outfield reserve, over Christian Bethancourt as the second catcher, over David Bote/Nick Madrigal (god forbid) as the scrappy middle infield backup, and they’ll non-tender Mike Tauchman and then re-sign him for less money than they’d have had to given him in arbitration and give him a $50 Visa gift card for appearing on the Marquee Sports Network Bears postgame show a couple of times.

And that’s it.

But if you’re mad that Cody came back because now they don’t have money to spend, don’t be. They weren’t going to spend that. At least not most of it.

The one thing they will do is add a veteran starting pitcher. My guess is they’ll happily be linked to Corbin Burnes and Blake Snell and end up signing Jordan Lyles. “Sure, he only pitched in five games last year, but two years ago he made 31 starts. And you have to be pretty good to lose 17 games in a season!”

Don’t blame this on Cody. All he did was make the Cubs actually spend the $27.5 million instead of sitting on it. And he’s guaranteed to be better than whoever they’d have brought in to replace him.

And there aren’t any scouts around to tell Jed that he could have found anybody better anyway.