I read an article yesterday talking about how it was a huge mistake to keep Mark Cuban out of baseball ownership when he tried to buy the Cubs and the Pirates.
It now seems everytime I turn around Tom Ricketts is either being cheap, incompetent, or simply seems unable to do anything in a timely manner.
This roof tops fiasco seems to the icing on an incompetent cake.
I do not live in Chicago and I am not as plugged into the day to day operations and city stuff so I have a question.
Would the Cubs have been better off with Cuban as their owner? Would they be further along?
Windy, I don't know you more than just what I've read on the bears board. You've always came across as a pretty levelheaded person. So, I take that into account when I say this. You're not going to get a "fair" answer here. The cubs have gone through one of the worst losing streaks in the history of the team. It wouldn't matter if George Stienbrenner rose from the dead and bought the team, had they lost like this the owner would be "shit" in most people's eyes.
Defending Ricketts is a hard thing to do. The evidence you need to support any kind of proper argument with regard to finances we will never have and the best we can do is estimate based on what we do have numbers on. People see someone like Forbes say the cubs are making over $300 mil annually and then see an $90 mil payroll and think well shit they are making bank. What they don't think about is the fact that the cubs likely pay $30 mil in revenue sharing. They also likely pay $10 mil in Wrigley upkeep. They also pay $35 mil in interest on the loan the leveraged partnership with Zell that was part of the sale any owner would have had to agree to. That alone is $70-80 mil. You then have other misc stuff like marketing that people don't consider.
If you legitimately want to read a fair assessment of the Ricketts I recommend this. Be warned it's long as fuck but really well written and is fair to both the Ricketts and those who feel they aren't doing enough to improve the team.
http://www.bleachernation.com/2014/...d-the-syncing-of-baseball-and-business-plans/
That doesn't answer the main question as to whether Cuban would have been better. It simply lays out the situation because without knowing that you can't accurately make a statement one way or another. I don't think Cuban would have waited 2 years to fire Hendry. I think he would have come a bit harder. The Ricketts took a slower approach that sort of allowed them to get their feet wet before making rash decisions. That approach is understandable given they had 0 experience in sports franchises where as Cuban coming in having owned another team would understand some of the pitfalls of ownership better. In retrospect, you could argue that they probably should have started shedding salary sooner. Perhaps if they'd realized where they were headed in in the 2009-2010 off season they could have dealt Zambrano before he was relatively worthless. That is a tough call to make because coming off an 83 win season where they made the playoffs it's easy to believe they were closer than they actually were. So, in no way am I blaming them for trying to compete in 2010-2011. I'm just trying to point out that a better owner might have recognized some of the areas where the team was lacking and started a rebuild sooner.
Hiring Theo quite honestly would have been a Cuban like move. Two years prior to the fall out in Boston, most would have considered him one of the best in the business. Additionally, what gets lost in the beer and chicken fiasco of boston before he was fired was the fact that team still won 90 games. Theo isn't a savior that the media/cubs pr made him out to be but he's quite qualified and should be viewed as a smart move given both their lack of experience and his lengthy track record. Cuban would likely have hired the best available candidate which Theo was arguably the best from 2009-2011
From there, it's really not Cuban choosing players it's just a question allotted payroll. The assumption is Cuban would have gone out and spent crazy. This is frankly impossible to prove. You can make the case that as the Mavericks owner has added players and logically as the owner of the cubs he would do the same. But, even if that is true how much more would he spend than the Ricketts? Would he have outbid the Yankees or Dodgers who are far more flush with cash because of ridiculous tv contracts that pay for the entire payroll of both teams where as the cubs are getting around $45 mil in tv revenue by estimates I've read. And from there are the players they went crazy signing good FA signings? Would they have signed help in the OF in the form of B.J. Upton who's been horrible as a FA for the braves? And even if they had signed the "right" players are those players good enough to make the cubs as constructed in 2010 a contender?
That's the problem with this line of thought. It makes numerous assumptions along the way that more money means better results. It's quite easy to prove that's incorrect because if it were the case the Yankees would have won more than 1 title in the past decade where they were far away the biggest spenders. That's not to say there isn't some correlation between spending and success just that it isn't a guarantee of success.
The short answer is that it's too hard to say. There are multiple paths organizations can take to success. The yankees spent like drunk guys at a whore house. The cardinals have spent more like a mid-market team they are. The Yankees have the most titles and St. Louis is the second most. Right now the Ricketts look like cheap owners. In 3-5 years if they are consistently contending for the world series no one will give a shit and that's the rub. They have taken a long term plan and people want immediate results.