Chicago Cubs: Understanding who’s running my team
By Bill Felber
One of a series of articles looking at the front office structure of each major league team. Today, we take a deep-dive into the Chicago Cubs.
- Owner: Tom Ricketts
- President of Baseball Operations: Theo Epstein
- Executive VP and General Manager: Jed Hoyer
Ricketts purchased the Cubs from the Tribune Company following the 2009 season and hired Epstein away from Boston as president two seasons later when holdover GM Jim Hendry was fired. Epstein, in turn, brought in Hoyer to be general manager.
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The Epstein-Hoyer relationship had roots going back to their joint time in Boston. Hoyer was as an assistant general manager under Epstein until leaving following the 2009 season to become general manager at San Diego. In Chicago, Epstein and Hendry have appeared to function largely as a partnership, and Ricketts has given them broad leeway – save for financial fundamentals – to make player judgments as they see fit.
Off the field, the Ricketts-Epstein-Hoyer team has been an unqualified success. In the decade since Ricketts arrived, the team payroll has more than doubled, from $107.7 million in 2012 to $237.2 million.
Statista determined that the franchise value has nearly quadrupled in that same period, from $879 million in 2012 to $3.1 billion currently. That is the game’s fourth-highest valuation, trailing only the Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox.
That is driven in part by an aggressive approach to revenue streams on the part of Ricketts, whose background, not coincidentally, is in investments. Among the things he has done is substantially ramp up such streams, including the purchase and development of much of the ballpark area, notably the iconic rooftop stands across Waveland and Sheffield Avenues from Wrigley Field.
On the field, the impact of Epstein and Hendry has to be measured in two distinct stages. From their arrival through 2014, they engaged in a deep tear-down of the roster, which had gone 71-91 the prior season. The Chicago Cubs lost 101 games – the franchise’s worst record since 1966 – in 2012, and 288 games in the first three seasons.
During those first three seasons and based on the net change in Wins Above Average,* Epstein and Hendry shed an average of 7.83 games per year from the team’s roster.
That teardown turned a corner in 2015 when the Cubs improved 24 games in the standings, the franchise’s largest leap since 1983-84. Between 2015 and 2018, the moves made by Epstein and Hoyer averaged a +6.25 game impact on the team and brought four consecutive post-season appearances along with the 2016 World Series title.
As the franchise’s first World Series win since 2008, it established beyond question the reputation of Epstein and Hoyer both in Chicago and across most of MLB.
Going forward, it’s worth noting that in 2019, the duo’s impact on team performance slid back to a neutral -0.4 games, and the Cubs missed the playoffs for the first time since 2014. That probably casts 2020 as an indicator year for whether Epstein and Hendry are about to preside over their second tear-down, or whether they can keep the 2015-18 streak going.
In that realm, it’s no coincidence that the Cubs have spent much of the off-season cogitating not which players to acquire, but whether to trade Kris Bryant, who will be a free agent in another season or two. Chicago’s payroll is expected to be about $209 million this season – triggering a second consecutive luxury tax payment – largely due to commitments made years ago to now-declining talents such as Jon Lester – that have tied the front office’s hands.
As previously noted, the Chicago Cubs are hardly charity cases. Even at $209 million and including a potential luxury tax assessment, their 2020 payroll is likely to remain below 50 percent of yearly revenues, leaving plenty of room for off-field expenses and profit.
Rather, the problem for Epstein-Hoyer – and this is the one area where Ricketts has exercised control – is the desire to adhere to the luxury tax threshold.
Next. Jessica Mendoza walks back her Fiers comments. dark
*This calculation is obtained by determining the net impact of all player transactions on team performance for the season(s) in question. Wins Above Average is a zero-based offshoot if Wins Above Replacement; thus, the final figure suggests the degree of positive or negative movement in the standings attributable to front office moves.