Tom Ricketts vs Mark Cuban

WindyCity

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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?
 

WindyCity

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The Cubs would have been better off with a tennis ball running this team.

Okay.

I just wanted to make sure that my distaste for Ricketts was not just me mis reading something.

If I watch him sit in the stands with fans anymore I will puke. Buy the damn buildings across the street and tear them down like a real billionaire.
 

ClydeLee

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He wouldn't pile out his cash for the rebuild alone and the public/city wouldn't want to give out money for the renovation to him either.

The way he talked he wanted vast technological and luxurious types of atmospheres for the stadium he would own. That would be a big hectic issue too.

He would definitely not cap spending on the roster, so they wouldn't been a bottom barrel team, but no way would they be a world series contender. They'd still be in limbo holding out for that improved stadium to coincide with success.

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beardown28

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mark Cuban would have made a huge impact on the cubs.

they would be damn good and money wouldn't mean a thing. bad contract? who cares....that's how it would have been. Id take him on any of my fav teams.

I agree with this. I was all for Cuban getting the Cubs. Unfortunately, his style and attitude don't seem to work well with the old men running MLB.
 

chibears55

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Would the Cubs have been better off with Cuban as their owner? Would they be further along?

first its no guarantee that cuban himself would of actually bought the team because he may not of accepted the tribune and zell condition of sale..

a condition of the sale, which allowed the Tribune Company and Sam Zell to avoid substantial capital gains tax associated with the sale..
Minimizing tax liability with debt financing was the No. 1 goal of Tribune Company management and Sam Zell in selling this asset. That alone made it a tough deal for many of the interested parties to handle. Add in the fact that the world markets were on fire so financing was very difficult to obtain at that time. Whoever was going to buy the Cubs — from Mark Cuban, to John Canning, to any of the other interested parties — was going to have to play under those rules. That narrowed the playing field quickly..


say he did agree and bought the team, he would of pretty much had to of done the same thing with payroll to minimize the tax liability for 7 yrs..

how he would of went about it would be an unknown for us all...

maybe he keeps the majority of the roster then intact and just added in whatever they had in the system then like colvin, lemeihu, Jackson, vitters etc and just ride them out.. he still wouldn't of been able to add any of the big FAs like pujols or fielder at the time because of the agreement.

does he get the international academy and sign all those top international kids for down the line ? if he keeps payroll at 140 MIL by keeping the roster as is, he may of won 80-85 games but how does that improve a bad system with the way the new draft system works ?

the cubs may not completely suck under Cuban today but they would be mediocre at best and more then likely have a bad system still , and in 2 years after that contract agreement expires, yea he probably would go hog wild on FAs but in 2 yrs, there probably wont be many if any big FAs to sign because most are getting tied up by their teams early so where will they be at in 2 yrs. under Cuban probably a mediocre 80-85 win team still..

BUT we will never know will we ???
 

beckdawg

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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.
 

dabynsky

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You guys do know that Cuban wrote an article about what he would have done with the Cubs, and he specifically stated that he wasn't going to maintain the Tribune level payrolls. Yes it wouldn't have dropped to these levels, but the idea that he was going to buy a contender appears to be false as well.
 

Shawon0Meter

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Cuban said he was going to have a 2nd tier payroll team while also putting good money into scouting and development. Sounds like what most Cubs fans who are sick of losing say they want...


but like cb55 said
we will never know will we ???
 

dabynsky

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Cuban said he was going to have a 2nd tier payroll team while also putting good money into scouting and development. Sounds like what most Cubs fans who are sick of losing say they want...


but like cb55 said
Really a 2nd tier payroll is what fans who complain about the highest ticket prices or the top 5 revenue of team want?
 

justaChifan

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You guys do know that Cuban wrote an article about what he would have done with the Cubs, and he specifically stated that he wasn't going to maintain the Tribune level payrolls. Yes it wouldn't have dropped to these levels, but the idea that he was going to buy a contender appears to be false as well.

Yes I read the article.
He said all the right things that a future hopeful wanna be member in a hard to get in club would say. Do you really think he's going to tell people his passion to succeed and willingness to out spend other owners will get him any where closer to owning a team?
 

JZsportsfan

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If the Cuban bought the Cubs the Cubs would field Darvish, Puig, Tanaka, and Pujols/Fielder every day and then some. However, the farm would probably still be terrible but I would be Cuban would have had the pull to also woo Epstein so maybe not
 

jooo83

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My favorite teams
  1. Chicago Cubs
  1. Chicago Bulls
  1. Chicago Bears
  1. DePaul Blue Demons
Tom Ricketts may end up having the last laugh when the Wrigley renovations and the team/farm 'overhaul' is complete but that won't change the fact that much of this extended 'rebuild' appears to be a farce. Tom Ricketts talks a big game but hasn't backed it up thus far. Nowhere does it say you have to be awful to build a good farm system (See, Texas, Boston, St. Louis, etc) especially for a big market team. The Cubs aren't the Marlins, A's, Royals, or Pirates, and shouldn't pretend they are. The Cubs could have done a much better job (or simply made an effort) to balance short term success with long term success. You can't objectively argue otherwise. This is even more true when you consider how expensive it is to attend a Cubs game. You can sit here and point to several top prospects in the farm system and say the plan is working (and you would have valid points) but any team that drafts in the top 5-10 every year should have elite prospects. The best FOs are those that find talent in the later picks and rounds. But I guess that is a discussion for a different time.

I can't pretend to know exactly what is going on behind the scenes but on the surface the lack of any progress at all on the Wrigley Field renovations screams of incompetence. The Cubs have the money (to either buy the buildings or engage in a lengthy lawsuit with the rooftop owners that they likely couldn't afford) and arguably the law on their side (it is my understanding that the current contract between the Cubs and the rooftop owners does not say the team cannot block their views) to remedy this problem and start the renovations. No one can say for sure that the team would be better off with Cuban as owner but I have far more faith that an aggressive self made billionaire with deeper pockets and motivation to win would offer more effective leadership.
 

chibears55

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Do some of you realize that the Cardinals Redsox Rangers teams you see are good now and keep saying built a good farm system were once bad before they built their farm system and became consistently good with a new FO that drafted well, Etc...

Do some of you know that Ricketts dropped ticket prices from 2011 - 2013 and did not raise them for 2014 ?



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beckdawg

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Anyone who argues for both short and long term success at the same time needs to realize those 2 ideas are directly at odds. You build for the long term by drafting and signing IFAs. Record determines draft position inversely(as well as slot money for picks and IFAs). Trading for future stars comes by trading good or even great players. In fact, short term success often means trading long term prospects for short term players.

A typical argument is that a team like the cardinals have had great success in the draft despite lessor picks. That relies on other teams making mistakes. If the teams a head of you draft the better players then nothing you do matters. Additionally, if there is some strategy here that is allowing them to excel, teams are going to hire away staff and incorporate it into their own organizations thus killing the advantage. This is exactly what happened with "moneyball" and numerous other concepts before it. If it's luck that will eventually run out.

The reality is the cubs had neither at the time Theo was hired. Their AA/AAA system was utter crap. Seriously go look at the players on those teams. I think Castillo is the only player that came up through their system and has had more than replacement level of success. The two years prior to his hiring i think they won 75 and 71 games. Baseball is a zero sum game. Every team is trying to improve but to do so it comes at a cost of other teams. So, the cubs being "good" at draft and "good" at FA talent isn't always enough.
 

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