By Patrick Mooney, Ken Rosenthal and Sahadev Sharma

CHICAGO —  At first glance, the post from an X user named @Brooks_Gate seemed like something a multibillion-dollar company would ignore.

It consisted of a chart that used estimated data to illustrate the percentage of revenue spent on player payroll. Rather than sitting at the top with heavyweights like the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets, the Chicago Cubs were lumped in near the bottom alongside the crosstown White Sox as well as the Pittsburgh Pirates, Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins — the lightweight class.

The Wrigley Field money-making machine drove the Cubs to the third-highest revenue in Major League Baseball last year, according to sources briefed on the club’s finances. Yet even as one of the world’s most beloved ballparks hums along, a single post on social media struck a nerve with fans — and inside the executive offices.

When fans stream into Wrigley Field for Friday’s 1:20 p.m. home opener, unmistakable signs of the disparity between revenue and payroll will be visible. It’s seen in making Craig Counsell the highest-paid manager in the game and then handing him almost the same roster that got David Ross fired after the 2023 season. It’s seen in trading for Kyle Tucker after back-to-back years with 83 wins, but not going all-out to maximize his final season before becoming a free agent. It’s seen in handing the third-base job to an unproven rookie at the start of a playoffs-or-bust season, after budgetary restrictions effectively took them out of the running for Matt Chapman and Alex Bregman.

how much revenue each MLB team generated last year, and how much of that is going towards their payroll this year pic.twitter.com/UAZmHhaR8a

— BrooksGate (@Brooks_Gate) March 29, 2025

The graphic that perturbed Cubs executives was just one of many floating around in the vast expanse of social media. But it captured the growing belief that the Cubs no longer seem quite as singularly focused on winning the World Series, at least compared to the way that 1908 once hung over prior regimes.

One reason is the payroll parameters set by the Ricketts family ownership group and Crane Kenney’s business operations department. Another is the rising cost of doing business in the hypercompetitive National League. Taken together, those factors have left the club in a somewhat nebulous state, as legitimate contenders but with a margin for error that is arguably thinner than it should be.

The organization’s decision-makers dispute that notion. They believe the graphic is misleading and that they are making forward-looking financial choices, from hiring Counsell to building a scouting presence in Japan to enhancing player development.

“Talking about team revenue and payroll without including the other investments in baseball and business operations, as well as the impact of revenue sharing, does not show the whole picture,” said Kenney, a reference to the capital expenditures to maintain a team-owned ballpark that opened in 1914, and operating costs to run a popular tourist attraction.

Still, one league source referred to “the handcuffs” that Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer has dealt with while trying to build a playoff contender. A competing view, however, is that the Cubs spent roughly $100 million more than the Milwaukee Brewers last year and still finished 10 games behind that small-market team.

“The focus should not be on payroll,” Hoyer said. “Last season we went over the luxury tax and we ultimately didn’t win. That’s on me. I think we’ve built a better team this year and I’m excited for the season.”

On paper, the club remains a favorite to win the NL Central with a solid pitching staff, first-round picks all over the field and the ability to upgrade at the trade deadline. This new Cubs Way could work. But success would come despite the discrepancy highlighted by the graphic on social media. The Cubs’ spending on payroll does not appear to match their revenues.

Imagine what Chicago’s lineup would look like with Chapman or Bregman hitting in the middle of the order and playing Gold Glove defense at third base. Within the past two offseasons, the Cubs had their chances to sign those All-Stars, who lingered on the free-agent market longer than expected.

Hoyer’s baseball operations department viewed each player as a sound investment and lasted into the final rounds with Scott Boras, the high-powered agent who represents both Chapman and Bregman. Those negotiations, however, went down as missed opportunities.

Matt Shaw, the unproven player tapped to play third base, might wind up being the NL’s Rookie of the Year. But the Cubs also could have bought more time for Shaw, the No. 13 pick in the 2023 draft, or upgraded in other areas to lower some of the team’s overall unpredictability.

Shaw started spring training this year understanding that Bregman was a possibility for a front office that often stays engaged on free agents deep into February or even March.

The year before, with a hole at third base, league sources said the Cubs kept Chapman on their radar but never made a formal offer due to budgetary constraints.

Chapman eventually signed a three-year, $54 million contract with the San Francisco Giants. While the Cubs started seven different players at third base last year — all no longer in the organization — Chapman posted 7.1 wins above replacement, per Baseball Reference.

“The Cubs had a lot of interest in me,” Chapman told The Athletic. “They were willing to do a one-year deal with me.

“There was just no way I could take the Cubs’ one-year deal, just for protection purposes. I was definitely considering it. I thought it would have been a good place to play. I thought they were a good team.

“Even if it was two with an opt-out after the first year, I would have really had to take a look at it. But they said with the way their money was, they could only do a one-year. I was just like, ‘That’s just too risky.’”

Boras first placed another client, Cody Bellinger, back with the Cubs before securing Chapman’s deal with the Giants. Chapman played so well in the Bay Area that he wound up signing a six-year, $151 million contract extension last September.

Matt Chapman would have made sense for the Cubs, who couldn’t make him more than a one-year offer because of budget limitations. (Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)

Bellinger, meanwhile, had a good-but-not-great season with the Cubs, which convinced him to opt in for another year on his current deal. Rather than retain the former MVP, the Cubs traded Bellinger to the New York Yankees last December, a move that lined up with their blockbuster deal to acquire Tucker from the Houston Astros.

In a salary dump, the Cubs gave up Bellinger for Cody Poteet, a 30-year-old pitcher who got designated for assignment last week and was then traded to the Baltimore Orioles for cash considerations.

Internal frustrations resurfaced in February once the Cubs missed on another third baseman. Bregman picked the Red Sox, signing a three-year, $120 million contract that includes a substantial amount of deferred money that lowered the present-day value.

Hoyer was authorized to present Bregman and Boras a four-year deal worth $115 million, according to league sources, which paled in comparison to offers made by the Astros (six years, $156 million) and Detroit Tigers (six years, $171.5 million) as well as the opportunity in Boston.

While thanking the Ricketts family for the freedom to pursue Bregman, Hoyer also made it clear to reporters that this was deemed an exceptional case. The money earmarked for Bregman would not be automatically transferred into this year’s budget for baseball operations.

Hoyer also revealed that the Cubs were around their budget limits last year when ownership gave the approval to sign Bellinger. Their final 2024 payroll wound up ninth in the majors, according to The Associated Press, at almost $240 million, or just slightly over MLB’s luxury-tax threshold.

If Hoyer had to make a special request for Bellinger, then signing another All-Star shortly thereafter would have been out of the question. This was not lost on one of the sport’s most influential agents.

“The winning commitment barometer of a major-league team is the percentage of revenues invested in talent,” Boras said.

Ten years ago, Cubs executives were highlighted in a glowing Bloomberg Businessweek cover story that declared “a sports empire is in bloom.” The major-league club had finished in fifth place five years running, and the franchise had not captured a World Series title since Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential administration. Still, the roaring optimism proved to be accurate.

Theo Epstein, the curse-buster from Boston, had recruited Hoyer to serve as his general manager in a growing front office, and later hired star manager Joe Maddon. Big-name free agents flocked to Chicago for the money and the chance to make history.

Just as the baseball side of the organization had modernized scouting and player development systems to support an elite farm system, Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts and Kenney’s group realized the synergy of a renovated Wrigley Field, which suddenly became the new avatar for a franchise long known as the Lovable Losers.

Kenney delivered the money quote in that Bloomberg Businessweek story: “Basically, my job is fill a wheelbarrow with money, take it to Theo’s office, and dump it.”

The wheelbarrow was big enough to win the 2016 World Series and carry the NL’s highest payroll in 2019, a disappointing season that was the lone playoff miss amid five postseason appearances between 2015 and 2020. But since the fall of what they hoped would be a dynasty, the Cubs have taken a conservative approach while certain NL clubs continue to operate aggressively.

The financials for almost every MLB franchise are opaque, but The Associated Press gave a snapshot on Opening Day 2025 that ranked the Cubs 12th out of 30 clubs with a major-league payroll nearing $193 million, which put them lower than the Arizona Diamondbacks.

That total does not reflect the organization’s entire spend on baseball operations. A team source indicated the Cubs were fifth in that category last year, though the NL is becoming a different kind of arms race.

The Mets, pushed by owner Steve Cohen, and Dodgers, taking advantage of an exceptional TV deal, are both carrying major-league payrolls north of $300 million. The Philadelphia Phillies, led by managing partner John Middleton, have added more investors in recent years as the club pushed its payroll toward the $300 million level.

The Atlanta Braves followed a Wrigleyville blueprint, building The Battery Atlanta around Truist Park, and business is booming. The San Diego Padres just signed Jackson Merrill, a dynamic young center fielder, to a nine-year, $135 million contract extension, which now gives the club six players on nine-figure deals.

“Deficit spending in the National League has definitely accelerated in the past five years,” Kenney said. “This has added pressure to grow revenue in new ways and innovate beyond our comfort zone.”

Fans cheer on Shota Imanaga. Wrigley Field continues to help fuel the Cubs’ robust revenue. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

Forbes recently assessed the Cubs at $4.6 billion, the fourth-most valuable franchise in baseball, an astronomical increase from the $845 million purchase price of the team, Wrigley Field and a piece of a regional sports network in 2009. The Ricketts family subsequently sold equity shares to help finance the stadium renovations, but they do not view that as a sustainable strategy for signing free agents and propping up payroll.

Even as valuations soar — the Boston Celtics, an iconic NBA team, recently sold for $6.1 billion — industry sources said the franchise remains a generational asset for the Ricketts family. Navigating this next phase will be a challenge.

“The business model in baseball, it’s worked pretty well for a long time, but there’s a few things right now that are just a little out of kilter,” Ricketts said on 670 The Score during the team’s winter fan festival. “The Dodgers have a lot more resources, naturally, from smart business moves they made years ago. I don’t begrudge them any of that.

“I understand when fans say, ‘How come you don’t spend like that?’ Because they think somehow we have all these dollars that the Dodgers have or the Mets have or the Yankees have and we just keep it. Which isn’t true at all. What happens is we try to break even every year.”

Ricketts clarified his Cubs Convention comments during a recent sit-down interview with CNBC.

“Maybe using the word ‘break even’ wasn’t the way I wanted to say that,” Ricketts told CNBC. “I just want people to know that every dollar that’s spent at the ballpark goes back into putting a more competitive team on the field. Away from that, everyone knows — every Cub fan knows — that we’ve invested roughly a billion dollars into Wrigley Field itself and the neighborhood around, so it’s not a matter of us not investing. We are putting the best team on the field that we can every year.

“Fortunately, for baseball, player development is as important as how much you’re spending on free agents, so we just keep grinding and doing the blocking and tackling that build the organization from the bottom up.”

In 2020, when Hoyer took over for Epstein, the Cubs refused to label it as a rebuild. But they made no secret that there would be changes.

Hoyer dealt with the COVID-19-related budget cuts that forced his group to non-tender Kyle Schwarber and trade Yu Darvish in the middle of a pandemic. When the Cubs began to collapse months later, Hoyer made the bold move to unload Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant and Javier Báez in a flurry of deals at the 2021 trade deadline.

All those unpopular and unsentimental decisions eventually left the Cubs without any players remaining from their 2016 World Series team.

But what has surprised some players, agents and rivals is the cautiousness that has followed that period of transition.

“They announced what they were going to do when Jed took over,” said one executive who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss another club. “They were going to take a step back and they have. There was the assumption that once they got to a particular point they would start investing very heavily again. And they’ve probably been a little bit more methodical about it than a lot of people in the industry thought they would.”

The expectation was that Kenney’s wheelbarrow of money would come in once the front office reconstructed a stable foundation. While that has not yet happened in full force, the rival exec said, “They’re arguably the favorites in that division now. They’re still in pretty decent shape even with somewhat more modest spending.”

But big spending is the competitive advantage in a division where every other club routinely collects competitive balance draft picks to stack up more prospects. And if deficit spending, equity sales and deferred money are becoming common practices for the sport’s top teams, then the Cubs’ seeming reluctance to more assertively wield those financial tools becomes noticeable.

Jed Hoyer has yet to lead the Cubs to the postseason. In the final year of his contract, he faces pressure. (Griffin Quinn / Getty Images)

The Cubs’ pursuit of Bregman indicated that the bigger wheelbarrow has yet to arrive. Bregman passed the scouting eye test and the club’s projection model. Third base represented the only spot on the field where the Cubs did not have an established position player. Bregman’s championship experience and baseball IQ could have provided intangible benefits, and he’s close with Tucker after their time together in Houston.

After years of creating a solid major-league nucleus and restocking the farm system, this felt like the moment to strike. Instead, the Cubs whiffed and moved forward with Shaw, a top prospect and one of several talented young players who are being counted on to have breakthrough years.

Hoyer is now in the final year of his contract and under pressure. The rival official pointed to the Tucker trade, one that will be endlessly debated if the Cubs miss the playoffs this year and the Astros turn Cam Smith, the headlining prospect in that deal, into a superstar. The outcome may prove to be a referendum on the Cubs — and whether they’ll continue to face scrutiny for their spending.

“They’re going to have a test case with Kyle Tucker,” the rival executive said. “One extension probably puts all of that discussion to bed. And they have been active in a variety of these conversations. They just haven’t quite landed the player.”

Until they do, an undercurrent of frustration will run through Wrigleyville and social media, and the rumbling over time will only grow louder. Unless this is the year the Cubs win big.

(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photo: Quinn Harris / Getty Images)