Column: The power of spending big is evident in Major League Baseball’s postseason field

Talking about the Chicago Cubs’ spending habits during the 2014 general managers meetings, agent Scott Boras calculated the team’s worth at around $2 billion.

The Cubs were three years into a rebuild, and Boras called on the Rickettses to start spending.

“That is a reason to invest in your resource,” Boras said, “because you’re sitting on something that has made you 200 or 300 times your investment.”

Chairman Tom Ricketts apparently agreed and gave team President Theo Epstein the go-ahead to sign left-hander Jon Lester — who helped Epstein win one of his two rings in Boston — to a six-year, $155 million deal. The Cubs won a World Series two years later but failed to get back, leading to the sell-off of stars in July 2021.

Spending big doesn’t always work out, as Ricketts said last month when referring to the 2022 Cubs season as a “success.” In Ricketts’ mind, there was only one way to win.

“The fact is you can’t buy a championship team in baseball,” he said. “You have to build it. And that’s what we’re doing.”

The Cubs’ value rose to $3.8 billion by the start of this season, according to Forbes. That’s almost $3 billion more than what the Ricketts paid Sam Zell and Tribune Co. in 2009. Rooftop clubs, video boards, a TV network and other revenue streams combine to bring in even more millions.

In the second year of the current plan, the Cubs ranked 14th in payroll in 2022, according to Spotrac, and finished 19 games behind the division-winning St. Louis Cardinals. Ricketts said he would give President Jed Hoyer the freedom to act aggressively this offseason, but Hoyer can’t say how much the budget will be.

Despite Ricketts’ philosophy on spending, the correlation between teams spending big and making the postseason is evident in this season’s expanded 12-team field.

Nine of the top 12 teams in payroll qualified for the 12-team postseason field, with the three exceptions being the Boston Red Sox (ranked sixth), Chicago White Sox (seventh) and Los Angeles Angels (10th). The Red Sox traditionally are among the top-spending teams, while the White Sox added significantly the last two seasons in an attempt to win a championship with manager Tony La Russa in charge. Money misspent is a common denominator for these pair of Sox.

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The three qualifiers outside the top 12 were the Seattle Mariners (21st), Tampa Bay Rays (25th) and Cleveland Guardians (28th), the season’s biggest success story.

The Guardians on Saturday became the first to advance past the wild-card round with a 1-0, 15-inning win over the Rays in a game that featured 39 strikeouts and 11 hits. MLB honchos and Fox Sports will now pray the Guardians don’t knock off the New York Yankees and the game’s biggest star, Aaron Judge, thus spoiling their shot at the dream Yankees-Los Angeles Dodgers World Series.

The Guardians franchise hasn’t won a World Series since 1948, the longest championship drought of any major-league team. The San Diego Padres and Rays have never won a Series, while the Mariners have yet to play in one.

In truth, the Guardians are an organization owners would most like to emulate, but you really have to trust the front office to pull off something this bold. They’re the youngest team and have only one superstar, José Ramírez.

Another truth is Guardians fans didn’t buy in to the rebuild. The team that once sold out 455 consecutive games from 1995-2001 finished 25th in attendance at 17,050 per game. Part of the blame is on owner Paul Dolan for getting rid of so many top players before their free-agent payday, though President Chris Antonetti told me in 2019 the area’s demographics are to blame for the attendance woes.

“It’s just the population size is so small,” Antonetti said then. “When you think about not only just the overall size of the population — I think we’re the smallest city to have three big sports in the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball. The demographics may not be optimal for attracting people to the ballpark.

“But I think what we’ve found is we have a very high level of engagement among our fans. If you look at our TV ratings and the percentage of population that’s engaged … it’s really high. It’s just a very different environment in Cleveland today than it was 20 years ago and certainly than it was 40 years ago.”

The Guardians’ window for winning seemed to be closing just in time for the White Sox rebuild to come to fruition. But the White Sox’s window could be in jeopardy while the Guardians’ future looks bright. Sox GM Rick Hahn said Monday that they can’t depend on Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf to spend money this offseason.

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“We’re not going to be able to just throw money at the problem,” he said — though “problems” is more like it.

Mets owner Steve Cohen proved he’s fine throwing money at any and all problems and became baseball’s top-spending owner in his second year with a $282.7 million payroll. The “Cohen Tax” became the unofficial name of the new luxury-tax level in the last CBA, which Cohen said was “better than having a bridge named after you.”

Reinsdorf reportedly was one of four owners who voted against the sale of the Mets to Cohen, preferring a group led by Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez. You can see why Reinsdorf preferred A-Rod and J-Lo to the big-spending Cohen. The Mets owner gave 38-year-old starter Max Scherzer a three-year, $130 million deal last offseason and said afterward that GM Billy Eppler and the analytics department calculated Scherzer’s value but “might have added a little more for brand building.”

The $43.3 million average annual value of Scherzer’s deal is a record and about 20% higher than the previous highest AAV. Upon accepting the deal, Scherzer said: “When you hear an owner wants to do what it takes to win, obviously that piqued my interest.”

The Mets won 101 games but only got into the playoffs as a wild-card team. Scherzer was sent to the mound Friday at Citi Field in the series opener against the Padres and was shelled for a postseason-career-worst seven runs over 4⅔ innings, serving up four home runs in a 7-1 loss.

That’s not really the way to “brand build” but was a good start to what could be an interesting postseason.

Consider our interest piqued.