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.”</
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