Before Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer took his seat on the dugout bench Friday, he made sure the overhead heater wasn’t blasting.
A veteran of the home-opener media availability at Wrigley Field, he’d almost been scorched by that literal hot seat in years past.
The heater dialed on low, all Hoyer had to worry about were the inevitable questions about his expiring contract.
“It’s just as cold on Opening Day; it’s the same,” Hoyer said with a smile before the Cubs’ 3-1 victory against the Padres. “No, it feels a little different. . . . Everything feels a little bit different, but I’m excited we have a good team. And I just focus on that aspect of it and try not to focus on myself.”
On paper, this is the best team Hoyer has built as the head of the baseball operations department. Defense and baserunning have emerged as strengths. Led by Kyle Tucker and Seiya Suzuki — post-Theo Epstein acquisitions — the Cubs are coming off an impressive offensive series in West Sacramento in which they scored 35 runs in three games against the Athletics. And on Friday, they handed the -Padres their first loss of the season.
“Certainly a better team than we were last year,” Hoyer said. “On paper and in reality, I think we’re a better team. And obviously now it’s about going out there and playing. The offseason is for talking about the team on paper, and the season is for going out and doing it.”
While Hoyer’s future with the Cubs is uncertain — “If we ever end up talking, I’ll just keep that internal,” Hoyer said of -potential contract discussions with chairman Tom Ricketts — ownership and the business department have come under fire for the team’s spending constraints.
President of business operations Crane Kenney said Friday on ESPN 1000 that the Cubs’ baseball budget last season — including player payroll, manager and team-personnel payroll, front-office salaries, travel budget, etc. — was the fifth-highest in the majors.
Conveniently, it’s impossible to fact-check that claim because teams don’t make their baseball budgets available. But player-payroll estimates, while not all-encompassing, give a sense of team spending.
The Cubs ranked eighth in payroll last year ($229,724,211), according to the Associated Press. But they came in at No. 13 ($195,546,627) in 2023, No. 14 ($152,535,284) in 2022 and
No. 13 ($152,189,618) in 2021. Last season’s payroll, while still well shy of the top spenders, was an outlier during Hoyer’s tenure as president.
“I don’t like being fifth,” Kenney told ESPN 1000, taking it upon himself to continue to find ways to grow revenue. “I want it to be fourth or third. Will we ever catch the Dodgers or the Yankees or the Mets? I don’t know.”
But the Cubs’ payroll sat at No. 12 on Opening Day. They’re expected to add during the season, but still, at under $193 million, according to AP, the Cubs’ player payroll is significantly smaller than last year’s.
When the Cubs’ four-year, $115 million offer to Alex Bregman fell shy of the competition this spring, Hoyer made clear the contract would have pushed payroll beyond budget limits, while thanking the Ricketts family for green-lighting the pursuit.
That an average annual salary of under
$29 million needed a special exception shows the constraints the Cubs are self-imposing. Last week, Forbes’ valuation of MLB teams had the Cubs at No. 4, worth $4.6 billion.
The Cubs are favored to win the National League Central — and lead it with a 6-4 record. The next few weeks, a brutal schedule will add a wrinkle in evaluating their progress toward ending a four-year playoff drought.
“One series here and there, one offensive game — good or bad — can swing the numbers like crazy,” Hoyer said. “You have to try to focus on things you can control — baserunning, defense, those things.”
Or the temperature of the dugout heater rather than an uncertain contract situation.
