You really think that the Cubs will ever take money saved from a previous season and use it in future seasons to spend over their budget????
Considering this is what Theo said will likely happen in 2015, yes. However, as I said I don't think if they have $15 mil or whatever it ends up being left over that next year they will spend limit + $15 mil. As I said before, I think they will likely use any surplus to pay for the player they wanted to get anyways and would end up having more surplus the following year because I don't see the cubs droping $25-30 mil on anyone over the next 2-3 years. I guess it depends on how you look at it because if that is what happens they aren't really using that money. If that indeed happens it would be similar to them just keeping the money and using that as an excuse though they could in theory use it on Soler types or other places such as coaching, facilities...etc or even extensions.
They already have way enough money coming in to be players in the FA market without having to go back and use any of the 'saved' money. The Cubs are a top 5 revenue team in baseball. There are 10 teams this season with payrolls of $130M plus, but you want to believe the most their budget is $105-$110M???
Considering that is the budget they spent the past 2 years, yes I'm assuming that's where they are. Theo has said that the past 2 years they spent to their budget and
that was their opening day payroll. Also, I'm not sure what you're complaining about here. I basically said what you're suggesting that the TV money doesn't matter and will have little impact until 2019 likely at the earliest because they aren't going to go out and get 2-3 of the top 10 FAs in a year and if they just go after 1 a year they have plenty of room in budget to make that happen.
Could Theo be lying? Sure but if he had $130 mil payroll why wouldn't he spend to the limit? What does he get out of being frugal? I mean if you want to ***** about the lack of spending surely the target should be Ricketts not the front office because it's the owners who had them cut salary from their $140-150 mil peak. They tried to spend essentially their limit on Tanaka and it didn't work out. They tried to sign Sanchez similarly and it didn't work out. But he was trying to spend his money on players he thought could help long term. I'm not going to get into a debate over whether he should have put out more money for either or whether or not he should have gone after 2nd tier guys like Nelson Cruz. The point is he was trying to spend to the $105-$110 mil range. Right now they sit at $84.5M and if you subtract the $6 mil they gave Hammel and instead insert the $23 mil they would have given Tanaka had he signed you're talking about them having a 2014 opening day payroll of $101.5 mil which leaves them $4-8 mil if they were able to work out a deal to re-sign Shark long term in the 2014 budget. Shark signed a $5.34 mil deal to avoid arbitration so if you add that to $4-8 mil you get $9.5-$13.5 mil which is likely the salary range they were talking about in terms of re-signing him.
Whether or not it's ridiculous that a team in the 3rd largest market in the country should have more than $105-110 mil isn't really relevant because from all the information we have that is what the front office has to spend. If you don't like that fine, but that's again an ownership issue not a front office issue.
