Jed Hoyer Says Cubs Expect to Be Over Luxury Tax This Season
As written here and discussed elsewhere since early last winter, the Cubs almost surely didn’t see the first tier of the competitive balance tax as a hard cap. But when they missed out on the players at the very top of the market, it appeared as though they were indeed trying to avoid any overages. After all, what’s the point of going after value signings if you’re still going to be penalized for it? May as well pay for a little more certainty, to whatever extent that’s possible in baseball.
Yet here the Cubs are, hurtling toward mediocrity like Joe Dirt’s Boeing bomb with a top-10 payroll and about a 2% chance at making the postseason. Though the Rangers are spending even more in terms of actual and CBT dollars, at least their World Series memories are much closer in the rearview. With that in mind, it seems like an odd flex team leadership to talk about how much the Cubs are spending.
Yet that’s exactly what Jed Hoyer and Crane Kenney did when they joined the Parkins & Spiegel Show Thursday afternoon to support the Cubs for a Cure radiothon. After exchanging the requisite pleasantries and talking about Kenney being in a dunk tank at Gallagher Way this weekend, the pair of presidents responded to a question about whether the luxury tax penalties serve as a governor on spending.
“Next year is something that we’re still deciding,” Hoyer said. “But you know, as far as this year, we sort of looked at it in the end of February and we were likely to be under the tax. But once we decided to sign Bellinger, we sort of brought what I thought was a fantastic deal for the Cubs to bring back Cody, knowing that when we did that it was very likely to trigger us being over the tax. And Tom (Ricketts) and Crane were in favor of that knowing what it meant for the club.
“So the expectation is certainly that I think we’ll probably go over this year, and the reality is that it’s always been a discussion. There’s never been any real desire to stay under every year, it’s been like, ‘Let’s make those decisions on a year-to-year basis.’ We haven’t decided yet for next year, but the expectation is that we’ll be over this year and that’s really because the decision was made to invest in Cody when we’d already at the end of February when we’d already committed dollars to other players in the offseason.”
I have to tell you, folks, this is not something I expected to hear from Hoyer in mid-August with his team four games under .500 after being swept by the Guardians. It’s not a good thing to say at this point, and I actually see it as quite a bad look. Like, you went over for this?
“The CBT is not a governor,” Kenney added. “I know some people think that we’re afraid to trip the tax, [but] for the right player and the right circumstance and the right season, it’s not a governor and it wasn’t this year. And that’s a credit to our ownership, who, they wanna win like everyone else.”
Cody Bellinger is a great dude and he’s been a very solid player for the Cubs these past two seasons, but it’s a considerable stretch to call him that right/right/right trifecta. Unless, that is, Kenney was hinting at a pursuit of Juan Soto this winter. Yeah, no. All this stuff rings really hollow to me, like a PR spin to combat the notion that Cubs ownership is cheap while hoping people forget to pay attention to what that spending actually accomplished.
It felt even more like misdirection when Kenney pointed out the new Frozen Confines college hockey doubleheaders coming to Wrigley Field this winter. Green Day and The Smashing Pumpkins just played at the ballpark Wednesday night, continuing a string of big-ticket concerts that have increased in frequency from the days when Pearl Jam rocking Clark & Addison used to be a novelty. That’s another revenue stream to augment or offset broadcast rights deals that may take a hit in negotiations with Comcast.
The Cubs aren’t the worst-performing big spenders in MLB, but they’re a far-ass cry from the best and that’s what really matters. Milwaukee leads the division by a wide margin with a $155 million CBT payroll and the Reds are in second with a $120 million mark that puts them ahead of only the Tigers ($113M) and A’s ($83M). The Cardinals are nearly as thrifty with their $215 million luxury tax tab, but they’re still looking down on the Cubs in the standings.
I know the point of this whole thing was to reassure fans that the Cubs can and will spend when they want to, but that spending this year got them nowhere, and going over will put them in line for harsher penalties as repeat offenders. Then again, replacing a few veterans with some of the top-100 prospects waiting in the wings at Triple-A would allow the front office to field a more exciting roster at a lower cost.
Maybe I’m making too much out of this, but the timing and optics leave a lot to be desired here. Now I will look forward to these two making me look silly by landing Soto and running away with the NL Central thanks to a $300 million payroll next season.