WILL TOM RICKETTS GIVE KYLE TUCKER HIS $450 MILLION OR GO CHICAGO-CHEAP?
The Cubs remain the one sports team that brings hope, but fans will keep sinking in despair if the owner doesn’t sign a high-impact force to a long-term deal in the era of Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani
If we can use charm in any description of Tom Ricketts, he did win the World Series after 108 years. We also know he met his wife, Cecilia, in the Wrigley Field bleachers and lived in an apartment with his brother across the street. He shape-shifted, for a year. As long as the ballpark sprouts in green and red and timelessness — even with the stinky DraftKings venue — the Cubs will remain among MLB’s richer teams.
The revenue in 2024 is $503 million, third in the sport. So it’s time to spend in a town where the White Sox, awaiting word on Nashville as a potential option, are more minor-league than the Sacramento Athletics. At least Ricketts and Jed Hoyer responded after the winter meetings, acquiring Kyle Tucker as a franchise player who has accrued more wins above replacement since 2020 — WAR, baby — than all but three outfielders: Juan Soto, Aaron Judge and Mookie Betts. The trick is whether the owner, knowing Tucker just posted a .993 OPS, will bring money bags next year and sign him for the long term.
Or let him go so maddeningly after one season, which is how Ricketts is inclined to think when Tucker demands $450 million — more? — amid Soto’s $765 million sweetener. The question: Will he operate the Cubs as a major-market engine or submerge closer to the lowly levels of Jerry and Michael Reinsdorf and the McCaskeys? It galled me when Hoyer, his president of baseball operations, said the franchise had no interest in pursuing Soto through rampant negotiations.
“There is nothing that precludes us from being involved in those players. We did, organizationally, decide not to pursue that one,” Hoyer said in Dallas. “It doesn't mean in the future we won’t, but that was one we didn’t.”
Will they ever? The Cubs are a middle-market headache when they’ve refused to pay beyond $184 million for a player — Jason Heyward, for eight years. Dansby Swanson was paid $177 million for seven years. Jon Lester received $155 million for six years. Alfonso Soriano — way back, before the long-lost Tribune Company sold the team — received $136 million for eight years. Yu Darvish won $126 million for six years. That’s a total of $778 million, $13 million more than Soto and less if he remains with the Mets and allows his contract to rise past $800 million.
This season, Tucker will make about $18 million. He must stay healthy after a shin injury sidelined him for three months, which didn’t stop him from providing 23 home runs and 49 RBIs. He turns 28 next month. If he produces, Ricketts should pay royally for a star in his prime who has won a championship ring.
If not?
Hoyer might as well depart when his contract expires, because Ricketts isn’t spending enough of his smoking revenue on the product. What’s the point of competing against the Dodgers and Mets in the National League — or the Milwaukee Brewers — if Tucker is merely a rental? The Cubs continue to spew disappointment because they’re the one team that can identify Chicago with the nationwide sports kingdom when the Sox, Bears, Bulls and Blackhawks cannot. New York has been overtaken by Soto. Los Angeles is bonkers over Shohei Ohtani and his $700 million contract. Chicago?
This deal must topple a Ricketts payroll. In 2025, the Cubs should show they want to win a title more than once in a brief marshmallow treat. Hoyer has chosen to keep Seiya Suzuki not only as a designated hitter but to help pursue the Japanese ace, Roki Sasaki, with Shota Imanaga. “Seiya and Shota have had really good experiences,” Hoyer said. “I think we're an appealing destination for any Japanese player.”
Then buy Sasaki, too, at a price that won’t make Ricketts look cheap. I am not the only one making these suggestions. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, formerly a Jerry Reinsdorf devotee before turning last season, suggested the Cubs pursue Tucker and Alex Bregman. “That is the kind of plan the Cubs actually might pursue if owner Tom Ricketts were operating the team as a big-market behemoth rather than an efficient Midwest bank,” he wrote this week.
Said general manager Carter Hawkins at the winter meetings: “Are we looking for elite guys? Yeah. Are elite guys hard to find? Also yeah, and they cost a lot, either in prospects or in dollars. You obviously have to hit on the development side, and we have guys that are coming up through our system right now that we think have the opportunity to be those types of elite players. But yeah, it’s tough to fill to field a 101-win team, 95-win team, when you have 2.0- or 3.0-WAR players all around the diamond.”
At least they have Tucker for a trip to Japan and the following six months. At least the Cubs still have a credible farm system despite relinquishing Cam Smith to the Astros, in a deal including third baseman Isaac Paredes and pitcher Hayden Wesneski. They have manager Craig Counsell locked into a $40 million deal that hasn’t panned out yet. Ricketts is trying, somewhat. But he is not the Mets, the Yankees or Dodgers — or even close.
For what it’s worth, he’s blowing out the Sox as a forgotten franchise in a one-team city. “In order for a deal for us to make sense, it’d have to clear whatever our replacement level at that position is, which has gotten harder and harder as we’ve gotten better and better,” Hoyer told media. “We have good position players in most positions. So as you think through that you’re not going to bend over backwards and do a big deal to add a half a win and have a negative asset in the future. All these are the things you’re thinking about. You have to feel like you clear that bar by a decent amount.”
They cleared it, for now. If the Yankees sign Tucker next year, see if baseball’s limbo bar crashes at Wrigley.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.